^^ 




Class. 
Book.- 



Copyright N^_ 



CQPi'RIGilT DEPOSrr. 



MAN OR THE STATE ? 



MAN OR THE STATE? 

A Group of Essays by Famous Writers 



COMPILED AND EDITED BY 

WALDO R. BROWNE 



*'What is it to be born free and not to 
live free? What is the value of any pol- 
itical freedom but as a means to moral 
freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or 
a freedom to be free, of which we boast?" 

Thoreau 




NEW YORK 

B. W, HUEBSCH 

MCMXIX 



COPYRIGHT 1919 BY 
B. W. HUEBSCH 

PRINTED IN U. S. A 



5l.^ 



-^^1 



APR 24 1320 



CU565665 






h 



'^ CONTENTS 

^ CHAPTEE PAGE 

Introduction vii 

I. P. Kropotkin: The State, Its Historic Role 1 

II. Henry Thomas Buckle: Inquiry Into the 

Influence Exercised by Government . . 44 

III. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Politics .... 57 

IV. Henry David Thoreau: On the Duty op 

Civil Disobedience 70 

V. Herbert Spencer: The Right to Ignore the 

State 90 

VI. Leo Tolstoy: Appeal to Social Reformers , 100 

VII. Oscar Wilde: The Soul of Man Under 

Socialism 118 



INTRODUCTION 

" The great events of the day occupy my thoughts much at 
present. The old illusory France has collapsed; and as soon 
as the new, real Prussia does the same, we shall be with one 
bound in a new age. How ideas will then come tumbling about 
our ears ! And it is high time they did. Up till now we 
have been living on nothing but the crumbs from the revolu- 
tionary table of last century, a food out of which all nutri- 
ment has long been chewed. The old terms require to have 
a new meaning infused into them. Liberty, equality, and 
fraternity are no longer the things they were in the days of 
the late-lamented guillotine. That is what the politicians 
will not understand; and therefore I hate them. They want 
only their own special revolutions — revolutions in exter- 
nals, in politics, etc. But all this is mere trifling. What is 
all-important is the revolution of the spirit of man." 

Thus in 1870 wrote Ibsen, greatest in his day of the rare 
originative geniuses who " carry in their brains the ovarian 
eggs of the next generation's or century's civilization." And 
now at last, after nearly fifty years, the fulfilment of that 
prophecy is at hand. Not Prussia merely, but the most of 
monarchist Europe has collapsed. The old ideas are tum- 
bling about our ears at a rate which possibly Ibsen himself 
did not foresee. Even that hoariest and most impregnable 
of them all, the idea of the absolute State, though propped 
and buttressed during the past five years as never before in 
history, is everywhere visibly tottering — where it has not 
already tumbled. A new age is indeed upon us ! 

Probably no proof of failure less complete and terrible 
than the recent cataclysm could have shaken man's mystic 
devotion to the State. However it has oppressed, impov- 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTION 

crished, impeded him^ he has for the most part always re- 
garded it as an inevitable and indispensable part of the di- 
vine machinery, as remote from his control as gravitation or 
th,e weather. All through the centuries he has blindly ac- 
ceded to its insatiable demands, blindly conformed to its 
endless inhibitions, blindly sacrificed himself and his posses- 
sions to its alleged interests. Fed so long on this monot- 
onous diet of subserviency, the State came quite naturally 
to imagine that there existed no law of God or man to which 
it was not superior — of which fatal delusion the conse- 
quences are today writ large in blood and fire across half 
the world. 

The great underlying principle of English law, according 
to Dickens, is to make business for itself. The great under- 
lying principle of the State, it might be said with equal truth, 
is to make power for itself. As Renan pointed out, " it 
knows but one thing — how to organize egotism." So pre- 
occupied with this task has it been that it long ago forgot, 
if indeed it ever knew, that such a thing as the human soul 
exists. But now at last, aroused to rebellion by almost in- 
tolerable afflictions, the human soul begins to assert its su- 
premacy. Of that duel the ultimate issue is certain and 
near at hand. The servant who has so long usurped the 
master's place must return below stairs; the instrument must 
finally yield to its creator. 

But for all its crimes against humanity, the time is not 
yet when we can abolish the State entirely, as Ibsen urged, 
and " make willingness and spiritual kinship the orlv essen- 
tials in the case of a union." Eventually, unless moral 
progress is an illusion, that ideal will be realized. Mankind, 
however, has yet to serve a long and rigorous novitiate be- 
fore it can be worthy of such a consummation. Philosophic 
anarchism is a creed that postulates too much nobility, too 
much self-restraint and self-abnegation, in common human 
nature to be immediately practicable. For a few decades 
(perhaps even a few generations) longer, Man must con- 



INTRODUCTION ix 

tinue to bear as best he may with those accusing symbols of 
his moral imperfection, the policeman and the soldier. 

If, then, the State cannot at once be dispensed with, the 
alternative is reform, revision, melioration of the State idea. 
Here we shall at least be sure of a multitude of counsellors, 
each with his favorite State-theory or State-pattern to urge 
for adoption. It would be well to dismiss at the start those 
slightly anachronistic physicians who invariably prescribe 
more centralization as a cure for the ailments of our over- 
centralized State. Their ideal is pre-war Prussia, though 
they will not often admit it. But of Prussia as a working 
model of State-theory we might say, as Talleyrand said of 
the English public school system, " It is the best we have 
ever seen; and it is abominable." The earnest seeker for 
light will turn with far more of hope and interest to storm- 
swept Russia. Out of the Soviet experiment, and out of 
the ideas of the Guild Socialists in England, is evolving what 
may well prove to be the State-norm of the immediate future 
— or something very like it. 

But it should never be forgotten that the problem of the 
State is essentially a spiritual one. Political forms and in- 
stitutions, legal systems, legislative enactments, all the char- 
ters and codes and statutes in Christendom, are valid and 
stable only as they tend to assure freedom and justice to 
individuals. Political freedom is of value only as it leads 
to moral freedom, and there can be no public justice that 
does not find its ultimate sanction in private conscience. The 
State, if it is to endure at all, must devote itself henceforth 
to the organization of altruism rather than egotism; it must 
slough off completely its old predatory and repressive char- 
acter, and embrace the ideals of brotherhood and association. 
Above all, it must respect and preserve inviolate at whatever 
cost the principle of individual freedom. Not freedom to 
prey upon others, which was really the essence of the old 
individualism, but freedom from being preyed upon. Not 
the shadow of freedom, but its substance: not political free- 



X INTRODUCTION 

dom merely, but moral and economic freedom. If a govern- 
ment cannot permanently exist half slave and half free_, how 
much less so can a human being! 

More than this I shall not venture by way of prophecy. 
My purpose has been simply to indicate the problem_, to ac- 
centuate the need of reform. Definite solutions I must leave 
to abler intellects. My present appearance is in the lowly 
capacity of Editor, and as such I fall back upon the pre- 
cedent established or at least invoked by Carlyle : " Edi- 
tors are not here, foremost of all, to say How. . . . An Edi- 
tor's stipulated work is to apprise thee that it must be done. 
The ' way to do it,' — is to try it, knowing that thou shalt 
die if it be not done. There is the bare back, there is the 
web of cloth; thou shalt cut me a coat to cover the bare 
back, thou whose trade it is. ' Impossible ? ' Hapless Frac- 
tion, dost thou discern Fate there, half unveiling herself in 
the gloom of the future, with her gibbet-cords, her steel- 
whips, and very authentic Tailor's Hell, waiting to see 
whether it is ' possible ' ? Out with thy scissors, and cut that 
cloth or thy own windpipe ! " 

In considering the problem of the State the great thing, 
as Ibsen has pointed out, is not to allow one's self to be 
frightened by the venerableness of the institution. For those 
inclined to be thus frightened, as well as for a good many 
others, I have thought that a useful purpose might be served 
by bringing together a group of essays, written by some of 
the foremost thinkers of our time, which at least make plain 
that in neither its history nor its workings is the State a 
sacrosanct affair; that it is by no means an inerrant or ir- 
reproachable, even a reasonably efficient, social instrument; 
that under some other collective administrative arrangement 
humanity might achieve a far nobler and happier existence. 
The authors of these essays are of widely various, even di- 
rectly antagonistic, social creeds ; yet in the main points of 
their indictment against the State they are at one. 



INTRODUCTION xi 

A certain congruity of selection and arrangement will, I 
hope, be apparent in the contents of this volume. Kropot- 
kin's essay deals with the origin and historic evolution of 
the State. The chapter from Buckle, one of the greatest 
of philosophic historians, records the State's notable failure 
as a legislative agent. The three following papers consti- 
tute the challenge of the higher Individualism, as embodied 
in Emerson's serene and optimistic generalities, looking to- 
ward a society perfected from within; in Thoreau's keen 
eloquence, asserting the supremacy of personal Conscience 
over all other autliority; in Herbert Spencer's clear-cut logic 
arguing the right of freedom from external control as an inevi- 
table corollary to his " first principle " of social ethics — 
that " Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, pro- 
vided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." 
In the next essay Tolstoy pleads the case for Christian an- 
archism, or social salvation through individual self-perfection 
combined with passive resistance to the State. Finally, we 
have Oscar Wilde's glowing and trenchant statement of the 
manner of life that would be possible in a really free so- 
ciety. 

If this little book did no more than make generally avail- 
able, as it does, the first of these essays, I should feel that 
its existence were sufficiently justified. Prince Kropotkin's 
avowed position as an apostle of philosophic anarchism will 
of course repel those numerous persons who, like crows, in- 
variably take flight with much raucous cawing from the ver- 
bal bugaboos which they are too timid or too stupid to in- 
vestigate. But it need alarm no others. Despite his faith 
in a society based upon " willingness and spiritual kinship " 
rather than upon coercion, Kropotkin holds a secure place 
among those of our time whose work has left a permanent 
impress upon human thought. Every reader of his " IMu- 
tual Aid " knows how deeply and widely he has explored 
the origins of society, — upon what a vast range of data his 
conclusions are based. The essay here reprinted is a pro- 



xii INTRODUCTION 

duct of the same study, though of course restricted to a 
narrower field, that went to the making of " Mutual Aid." 

The reader may wonder, particularly in view of several 
references in this Introduction, why Ibsen is not represented 
in the main contents of the compilation. But my plan has 
been to include only complete, or fairly complete, essays; 
and unfortunately, Ibsen's appearances in what he calls 
^ " my capacity as state-satirist " are in the way of brief and 
[ scattered glimpses rather than in any sustained exposition. 
j Yet no one else, save possibly Thoreau, pierces so directly to 
i the heart of the matter, — as witness this final quotation: 
" The State is the curse of the individual. With what is 
the strength of Prussia as a State bought? With the merg- 
ing of the individual in the political and geographical con- 
cept. The waiter makes the best soldier. Now, turn to the 
Jewish nation, the nobility of the human race. How has it 
preserved itself — isolated, poetical — despite all the bar- 
barity from without? Because it had no State to burden it. 
Had the Jewish nation remained in Palestine, it would long 
since have been ruined in the process of construction, like 
all the other nations. . . . The State has its roots in Time: 
it will have its culmination in Time. Greater things than it 
will fall; all religion will fall. Neither the conceptions of 
morality nor those of art are eternal. To how much are we 
really obliged to pin our faith? Who will vouch for it that 
two and two do not make five up in Jupiter? " 

Waldo R. Browne 



V 



p. KROPOTKIN 

(b. 1842) 
THE STATE: ITS HISTORIC ROLE ^ 



In taking as subject for this lecture the State and the part it 
has played in history I thought it would respond to a need 
which is greatly felt at this moment. It is of consequence, 
after having so often criticized the present State, to seek 
the cause of its appearance, to investigate the part played 
by it in the past, and to compare it with the institutions 
which it superseded. 

Let us first agree as to what we mean by the word State. 

There is, as you know, the German school that likes to 
confuse the State with Society. This confusion is to be 
met with even among the best German thinkers and many 
French ones, who cannot conceive of Society without State 
concentration. Yet to reason thus is entirely to ignore the 
progress made in the domain of history during the last thirty 
years; it is to ignore the fact that men have lived in societies 
during thousands of years before having known the State; 
it is to forget that for European nations the State is of re- 
cent origin — that it hardly dates from the sixteenth cen- 
tury; it is to fail to recognise that the most glorious epochs 
in humanity were those in which liberties and local life were 
not yet destroyed by the State, and when masses of men 
lived in communes and free federations. 

1 Published in 1898. The text used here is that of the edition 
issued in two-penny tract form from the oflfice of " Freedom," Lon- 
don. It is evidently a translation from the French, poorly done 
and wretchedly printed; for the present purpose it has undergone 
careful and thorough revision. A few passages more particularly 
propagandistic than historical in substance, amounting altogether 
to perhaps one-seventh of the entire essay, are omitted here. 



2 KROPOTKIN 

The State is but one of the forms taken by Society in the 
course of history. How can one be confused with the other? 

Oti the other hand, the State has also been confused with 
Government. It seems to me, however, that State and Gov- 
ernment represent two ideas of a different kind. The State 
idea implies quite another idea to that of Government. It 
not only includes the existence of a power placed above So- 
ciety, but also a territorial concentration and a concentration 
of many functions of the life of Society in the hands of a 
few or even of all. It implies new relations among the mem- 
bers of society. 

This characteristic distinction, which perhaps escapes no- 
tice at first sight, appears clearly when the origin of the State 
is studied. 

Really to understand the State there is, in fact, but one 
way: it is to study it in its historical development, and that 
is what I am going to endeavor to do. 

The Roman Empire was a State in the true sense of the 
word. To the present day it is the ideal of students of law. 

Its organs covered a vast domain with a close network. 
Everything flowed towards Rome, economic life, military life, 
judicial relations, riches, education, even religion. From Rome 
came laws, magistrates, legions to defend their territory, gov- 
ernors to rule the provinces, gods. The whole life of the Em- 
pire could be traced back to the Senate; later on to the Caesar, 
the omnipotent and omniscient, the god of the Empire. Every 
province and every district had its miniature Capitol, its 
little share of Roman sovereignty to direct its whole life. 
One law, the law imposed by Rome, governed the Empire; 
and that Empire did not represent a confederation of citi- 
zens, — it was only a flock of subjects. 

Even at present, the students of law and the authoritarians 
altogether admire the unity of that Empire, the spirit of 
unity of those laws, the beauty (they say), the harmony of 
that organisation. 

But the internal decomposition furthered by barbarian 
invasion, the death of local life, henceforth unable to resist 



KROPOTKIN S 

attacks from without, and the gangrene spreading from the 
centre, pulled that Empire to pieces, and on its . ruins was 
established and developed a new civilisation^ which is ours to- 
day. 

And if, putting aside antique empires, we study the origin 
and development of that young barbarian civilisation till 
the time when it gave birth to our modern States, we shall 
be able to grasp the essence of the State. We shall 
do it better than we should have done if we had launched 
ourselves into the study of the Roman Empire, of the empire 
of Alexander, or else of despotic Eastern monarchies. 

In taking these powerful barbarian destroyers of the Ro- 
man Empire as a starting point, we can retrace the evolution 
of all civilisation from its origin till it reaches the stage of 
the State. 

II 

Most of the philosophers of the last century had conceived 
very elementary notions about the origin of societies. 

At the beginning, they said, men lived in small, isolated 
families, and perpetual war among these families represented 
the normal condition of existence. But one fine day, per- 
ceiving the drawbacks of these endless struggles, they de- 
cided to form a society. A " social contract " was agreed 
upon among scattered families, who willingly submitted to 
an authority, which authority (need I tell you?) became the 
starting point and the initiative of all progress. Must I 
add, as you have already been told in school, that our present 
governments have ever since impersonated the noble role 
of salt of the earth, the pacifiers and civilisers of humanity.^ 

This conception, which was born at a time when little was 
known about the origin of man, prevailed in the last cen- 
tury; and we must say that in the hands of the Encyclopae- 
dists and of Rousseau the idea of a " social contract " became 
a powerful weapon with which to fight royalty and divine 
right. Nevertheless, in spite of services it may have ren- 
dered in the past, that theory must now be recognised as 
false. 



4 KROPOTKIN 

The fact is that all animals, save some beasts and birds of 
prey and a few species that are in course of extinction, live 
in societies. In the struggle for existence it is the sociable 
species that get the better of those that are not. In every 
class of animals the former occupy the top of the ladder, 
and there cannot be the least doubt that the first beings of 
human aspect already lived in societies. Man did not cre- 
ate society; society is anterior to man. 

We also know to-day — anthropology has clearly demon- 
strated it — that the starting point of humanity was not the 
family but the clan, the tribe. The paternal family such as 
we have it, or such as it is depicted in Hebrew tradition, 
appeared only very much later. Men lived tens of thousands 
of years in the stage of clan or tribe, and during that first 
stage — let us call it primitive or savage tribe, if you will 
— ^man already developed a whole series of institutions^ 
habits, and customs, far anterior to the paternal family in- 
stitutions. 

In those tribes the separate family existed no more than 
it exists among so many other sociable mammalia. Divi- 
sions in the midst of the tribe itself were formed by genera- 
tions; and since the earliest periods of tribal life limitations 
were established to hinder marriage relations between dif- 
ferent generations, while they were freely practiced between 
members of the same generation. Traces of that period 
are still extant in certain contemporary tribes, and we find 
them again in the language, customs, and superstitions of 
nations who were far more advanced in civilisation. 

The whole tribe hunted and harvested in common, and 
when they were satisfied they gave themselves up with pas- 
sion to their dramatic dances. Nowadays we still find tribes 
very near to this primitive phase, driven back to the out- 
skirts of the large continents, or in Alpine regions, the least 
accessible of our globe. 

The accumulation of private property could not take place, 
because each thing that had been the personal property of a 
member of the tribe was destroyed or burned on the spot 
where his corpse was buried. This is done even now by 



KROPOTKIN 5 

gipsies in England, and the funeral rites of the " civilised " 
still bear its traces: the Chinese burn paper models of what 
the dead possessed; and we lead the military chief's horse, 
and carry his sword and decorations, as far as the grave. 
The meaning of the institution is lost; only the form sur- 
vives. 

Far from professing contempt for human life, these primi- 
tive individuals had a horror of blood and murder. Shed- 
ding blood was considered a deed of such gravity that each 
drop of blood shed — not only the blood of men, but also 
that of certain animals — required that the aggressor should 
lose an equal quantity of blood. In fact, a murder within 
the tribe was a deed absolutely unknown; it is so to this 
day among the Inoits or Esquimaux — those survivors of 
the Stone Age that inhabit the Arctic regions. But when 
tribes of different origin, color, or tongue met during their 
migrations, war was often the result. It is true that already 
men had tried to mitigate the effect of these shocks. Even 
thus early, as has been so well demonstrated by Maine, 
Post, and Nys, the tribes agreed upon and respected cer- 
tain rules and limitations of war, which contained the germs 
of what was to become international law later on. For 
example, a village was not to be attacked without warning to 
the inhabitants ; and no one would have dared to kill on a path 
trodden by women going to the well. 

However, from that time forward one general law over- 
ruled all others : " Your people have killed or wounded 
one of ours, therefore we have the right to kill one of yours, 
or to inflict an absolutely similar wound on one of yours '* 
— never mind which, as it is always the tribe that is re- 
sponsible for every act of its members. The well-known 
biblical verses, " Blood for blood, an eye for an eye, a tooth 
for a tooth, a wound for a wound, a life for a life," — but 
no more ! — thence derive their origin, as was so well re- 
marked by Koenigswarter. It was their conception of jus- 
tice; and we have not much reason to boast, as the principle 
of " a life for a life " which prevails in our codes is but one 
of its numerous survivals. 

As you see, a whole series of institutions, and many o-thers 



6 KROPOTKIN 

which I must pass over in silence^ — a whole code of tribal 
morals, — was already elaborated during this primitive stage. 
And habit, custom, tradition sufficed to maintain this kernel 
of social customs in force; there was no authority to impose 
it. 

Primitive individuals had, no doubt, temporary leaders. 
The sorcerer and the rain-maker (the scientist of that epoch) 
sought to profit by what they knew, or thought they knew, 
about nature, to rule over their fellow men. Likev/ise, he 
who could best remember proverbs and songs in which tra- 
dition was embodied became powerful. And, since then, these 
" educated " men have endeavored to secure their rulership 
by transmitting their knowledge only to the elect. All re- 
ligions, and even all arts and crafts, have begun, as you know, 
by " mysteries." Also, the brave, the bold, and the cunning 
man became the temporary leader during conflicts with other 
tribes or during migrations. But an alliance between the 
" law bearer," the military chief, and the witch-doctor did 
not exist, and there can be no more question of a State with 
these tribes than there is in a society of bees or ants or 
among our contemporaries the Patagonians or Esquimaux. 

This stage, however, lasted thousands upon thousands of 
years, and the barbarians who invaded the Roman Empire 
had just passed through it, — in fact, they had hardly 
emerged from it. 

In the first centuries of our era, immense migrations took 
place among the tribes and confederations of tribes that in- 
habited Central and Northern Asia. A stream of people, 
driven by more or less civilised tribes, came down from the 
table-lands of Asia — probably driven away by the rapid 
drying-up of those plateaux — and inundated Europe, im- 
pelling one another onward, mingling with one another in 
their overflow towards the West. 

During these migrations, when so many tribes of diverse 
origin were intermixed, the primitive tribe which still ex- 
isted among them and the primitive inhabitants of Europe 
necessarily became disaggregated. The tribe was based on 
its common origin, on the worship of common ancestors. 



ICROPOTKIN 7 

But what common origin could be invoked by the agglomera- 
tions that emerged from the hurly-burly of migrations^ col- 
lisions, wars between tribes, during which we see the pa- 
ternal family spring up here and there — the kernel formed 
by some men appropriating women they had conquered or 
kidnapped from neighboring tribes ? 

Ancient ties were rent asunder, and under pain of a gen- 
eral break-up (that took place, in fact, for many a tribe, which 
then disappeared from history) it was essential that new 
ties should spring up. And they did spring up. They were 
found in the communal possession of land — of a territory, 
on which such an agglomeration ended by settling down. 

The possession in common of a certain territory, of cer- 
tain valleys, plains, or mountains, became the basis of a 
new agreement. Ancient gods had lost all meaning; and the 
local gods of a valley, river, or forest gave the religious 
consecration to the new agglomeration, substituting them- 
selves for the gods of the primitive tribe. Later on, Chris- 
tianity, always ready to accommodate itself to pagan sur- 
vivals, made local saints of those gods. 

Henceforth, the village community, composed partly or 
entirely of separate families — all united, nevertheless, by 
the possession in common of the land — became the neces- 
sary bond of union for centuries to come. On the immense 
stretches of land in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, it 
still exists to-day. The barbarians who destroyed the Ro- 
man Empire — Scandinavians, Germans, Celts, Slavs, etc. — 
lived under this kind of organization. And in studying the 
ancient barbarian codes, as well as the laws- and customs of 
the confederations of village communes among the Kabyles, 
Mongols, Hindoos, Africans, etc., which still exist, it becomes 
possible to reconstitute in its entirety that form of society 
which was the starting point of our present civilization. 

Let us, therefore, cast a glance on that institution. 



Ill 

The village community was composed, as it still is, of 
separate families; but the families of a village possessed the 



8 KROPOTKIN 

land in common. They looked upon the land as their com- 
mon patrimony^ and allotted it according to the size of the 
families. Hundreds of millions of men still live under this 
system in eastern Europe, India, Java, etc. It is the same 
system that Russian peasants have established nowadays, 
when the State left them free to occupy the immense Siberian 
territory as they thought best. 

At first, also, the cultivation of the land was done in com- 
mon, and this custom still obtains in many places — at least, 
the cultivation of certain plots of land. As to deforestation 
and clearings made in the woods, construction of bridges, 
building of forts and turrets which served as refuge in case 
of invasion, the work was done in common, — as it still is 
by hundreds of millions of peasants, wherever the village com- 
mune has resisted State encroachments. But consumption, 
to use a modern expression, already took place by family — 
each having its own cattle, kitchen garden, and provisions; 
the means of hoarding and transmitting wealth accumulated 
by inheritance already existed. 

In all its business, the village commune was sovereign. 
Local custom was law, and the plenary council of all chiefs 
of families — men and women — was judge, the only judge, 
in civil and criminal affairs. When one of the inhabitants, 
complaining of another, planted his knife in the ground at 
the spot where the commune was wont to assemble, the com- 
mune had to " find the sentence " according to local custom, 
after the fact had been proved by the jurors of both litigant 
parties. 

Time would fail me were I to tell you everything of in- 
terest presented by this stage. Suffice it for me to observe 
that all institutions which States took possession of later on 
for the benefit of minorities, all notions of right which we 
find in our codes (mutilated to the advantage of minorities), 
and all forms of judicial procedure, in as far as they offer 
guarantees to the individual, had their origin in the village 
community. Thus, when we imagine we have made great 
progress — in introducing the jury, for example, — we have 
only returned to the institution of the barbarians, after hav- 



KROPOTKIN 9 

ing modified it to the advantage of the ruling classes. Ro- 
man law was only superposed upon customary law. 

The sentiment of national unity was developing at the 
same time, by great free federations of village communes. 

Based on the possession and very often on the cultivation 
of the soil in common, sovereign as judge and legislator of 
customary law, the village community satisfied most needs 
of the social being. But not all his needs, — there were still 
others to be satisfied. However, the spirit of the age was 
not for calling upon a government as soon as a new need 
was felt. It was, on the contrary, to take the initiative one- 
self, to unite, to league, to federate, to create an understand- 
ing, great or small, numerous or restricted, which would cor- 
respond to the new need. And society at that time was liter- 
ally covered, as by a network, with sworn fraternities, guilds 
for mutual suport, " con-jurations," within and without the 
village, and in the federation. 

We can observe this stage and spirit at work even to-day, 
among many a barbarian federation having remained outside 
modern States modelled on the Roman or rather the Byzan- 
tine type. Thus, to take an example among many others, the 
Kabyles have retained their village community with the powers 
I have just mentioned. But man feels the necessity of ac- 
tion outside the narrow limits of his hamlet. Some like to 
wander about in quest of adventure, in the capacity of mer- 
chants. Some take to a craft, " an art," of some kind. 
And these merchants and artisans unite in " fraternities," 
even when they belong to different villages, tribes, and con- 
federations. There must be union for mutual help in dis- 
tant adventures or mutually to transmit the mysteries of the 
craft, and they unite. They swear brotherhood, and prac- 
tice it — not in words only, but in deeds. 

Besides, misfortune can overtake anyone. Who knows that 
to-morrow, perhaps, in a brawl, a man gentle and peaceful 
as a rule will not exceed the established limits of good be- 
havior and sociability? Very heavy compensation will then 
have to be paid to the insulted or wounded; the aggressor 
will have to defend himself before the village council and 



10 KROPOTKIN 

prove facts on the oath of six, ten, or twelve " con-jurors." 
This is another reason for belonging to a fraternity. 

Moreover, man feels the necessity of talking politics and 
perhaps even intriguing, the necessity of propagating some 
moral opinion or custom. There is, also, external peace to be 
safeguarded; there are alliances to be concluded with other 
tribes, federations to be constituted far oft, the idea of in- 
tertribal law to be propagated. Well, then, to satisfy all 
these needs of an emotional and intellectual kind the Kabyles, 
the Mongols, the Malays do not turn to a government: they 
have none. Men of customary law and individual initiative, 
they have not been perverted by the corrupted idea of a 
government and a church supposed to do everything. They 
unite directly. They constitute sworn fraternities, political 
and religious societies, unions of crafts — guilds as they 
were called in the Middle Ages, gofs as the Kabyles call 
them to-day. And these gofs go beyond the boundaries of 
hamlets: they flourish far out in the desert and in foreign 
cities; and fraternity is practiced in these unions. To refuse 
to help a member of your gof, even at the risk of losing all 
your belongings and your life, is an act of treason to the 
fraternity, and exposes the traitor to be treated as the mur- 
derer of a " brother." 

What we find to-day among Kabyles, Mongols, Malays, 
etc., was the very essence of life of the so-called barbarians 
in Europe from the fifth to the twelfth centuries, even till 
the fifteenth. Under the name of guilds, friendships, uni- 
versitates, etc., unions sv/armed for mutual defence and for 
solidarily avenging offences against each member of the 
union; for substituting compensation instead of the ven- 
geance of " an eye for an eye," followed by the reception of 
the aggressor into the fraternity; for the exercise of crafts, 
for helping in case of illness, for the defence of territory, 
for resisting the encroachments of nascent authority, for 
commerce, for the practice of " good-neighborship," for prop- 
aganda, — for everything, in a word, that the European, edu- 
cated by the Rome of the Caesars and the Popes, asks of the 
State to-day. It is even very doubtful if there existed at 
that time one single man, free or serf, (save those who were 



KROPOTKIN 11 

outlawed by their own fraternities) who did not belong to 
some fraternity or guild, besides his commune. 

Scandinavian sagas sing their exploits. The devotion of 
sworn brothers is the theme of the most beautiful of these 
epical songs; whereas the Church and the rising kings, rep- 
resentatives of Byzantine or Roman law which reappears, 
hurl against them their anathemas and decrees, which happily 
remain a dead letter. 

The whole history of that period loses its significance, and 
becomes absolutely incomprehensible, if we do not take the 
fraternities into account — these unions of brothers and sis- 
ters that spring up everywhere to satisfy the multiple needs 
of both the economic and the emotional life of man. 

Nevertheless black spots accumulated on the horizon. 
Other unions — those of ruling minorities — are also formed; 
and they endeavor, little by little, to transform these free 
men into serfs, into subjects. Rome is dead, but its tra- 
dition revives; and the Christian Church, haunted by Oriental 
theocratic visions, gives its powerful support to the new 
powers that are seeking to constitute them.selves. 

Far from being the sanguinary beast that he is represented 
to be in order to prove the necessity of ruling over him, man 
has always loved tranquillity and peace. He fights rather by 
necessity than by ferocity, and prefers his cattle and his 
land to the profession of arms. Therefore, hardly had the 
great migration of barbarians begun to abate, hardly had 
hordes and tribes more or less cantoned themselves on their 
respective lands, than we see the care of the defence of terri- 
tory against new waves of immigrants confided to a man who 
engages a small band of adventurers, men hardened in wars, 
or brigands, to be his followers; while the great mass raises 
cattle or cultivates the soil. And this defender soon begins 
to amass wealth. He gives a horse and armor (very dear 
at that time) to the poor man, and reduces him to servitude; 
he begins to conquer the germ of military power. On the 
other hand, little by little, tradition, which constituted law 
in those times, is forgotten by the masses. There remains 
only an occasional old man who keeps in his memory the 



12 K R O P O T K I N 

verses and songs which tell of the " precedents " of which 
customary law consists^ and recites them on great festival 
days before the commune. And little by little some families 
made a specialty, transmitted from father to son, of re- 
taining these songs and verses in their memory and of pre- 
serving " the law " in its purity. To them villagers apply for 
judgment of differences in intricate cases, especially when two 
villages or confederations refuse to accept the decisions of ar- 
bitrators taken from their midst. 

The germ of princely or royal authority is already sown 
in these families; and the more I study the institutions of 
that time, the more I see that the knowledge of customary law 
did far more to constitute that authority than the power of 
the sword. Man allowed himself to be enslaved far more 
by his desire to " punish according to law " than by direct 
military conquest. 

And gradually the first " concentration of powers," the first 
mutual insurance for domination — that of the judge and the 
military chief — grew up to the detriment of the village com- 
mune. A single man assumed these two functions. He sur- 
rounded himself with armed men to put his judicial decisions 
into execution; he fortified himself in his turret; he accumu- 
lated the wealth of the epoch, viz., bread, cattle, and iron, 
for his family; and little by little he forced his rule upon the 
neighboring peasants. The scientific man of the age, that 
is to say the witch-doctor or priest, lost no time in bringing 
his support and in sharing the chief's domination ; or else, add- 
ing the sword to his power of redoubtable magician, he seized 
the domination for his own account. 

A course of lectures, rather than a simple lecture, would 
be needed to deal thoroughly with this subject, so full of new 
teachings, and to tell how free men gradually became serfs, 
forced to work for the lay or clerical lord of the manor; how 
authority was constituted, in a tentative way, over villages 
and boroughs; how peasants leagued, revolted, struggled, to 
fight the advancing domination, and how they succumbed in 
those struggles against the strong castle walls and the men in 
armor who defended them. 



KROPOTKIN IS 

Suffice it for me to say that during the tenth and eleventh 
centuries Europe seemed to be drifting straight towards the 
constitution of those barbarous kingdoms such as we now 
discover in the heart of Africa, or those Eastern theocracies 
which we know through history. This could not take place 
in a day; but the germs of those little kingdoms and those 
little theocracies were already there and were developing 
more and more. 

Happily, the " barbarian " spirit — Scandinavian, Saxon, 
Celt, German, Slav — that had led men during seven or eight 
centuries to seek for the satisfaction of their needs in in- 
dividual initiative and in free agreement of fraternities and 
guilds, happily that spirit still lived in the villages and bor- 
oughs. The barbarians allowed themselves to be enslaved, 
they worked for a master; but their spirit of free action and 
free agreement was not yet corrupted. Their fraternities 
flourished more than ever, and the Crusades had but roused 
and developed them in the West. 

Then the revolution of the commune, long since prepared 
by that federative spirit and born of the union of sworn 
fraternity with the village community, burst forth in the 
twelfth century with a striking spontaneity all over Europe. 

This revolution, which the mass of university historians pre- 
fer to ignore, saved Europe from the calamity with which it 
was menaced. It arrested the evolution of theocratic and 
despotic monarchies, in which our civilisation would prob- 
ably have gone down after a few centuries of pompous ex- 
pansion, as the civilisation of Mesopotamia, Assyria, and 
Babylon had done. This revolution opened up a new phase 
of life, that of the free communes. 



IV 

It is easy to understand why modern historians, nurtured 
as they are in the spirit of the Roman law, and accustomed 
to look to Roman law for the origin of every political institu- 
tion, are incapable of understanding the spirit of the com- 
munalist movement of the twelfth century. This manly af- 
firmation of the rights of the individual, who managed to 



14 KROPOTKIN 

constitute Society through the federation of individuals, vil- 
lages, and towns, was an absolute negation of that central- 
ising spirit of ancient Rome which penetrates all historical 
conceptions of present-day university teaching. 

The uprising of the twelfth century cannot even be attrib- 
uted to any personality of mark, or to any central institution. 
It is a natural, anthropological phasis of human develop- 
ment; and, as such, it belongs to human evolution, like the 
tribe and the village-community periods, but to no nation in 
particular, to no special region of Europe, and it is the work 
of no special hero. 

This is why university science, which is based upon Roman 
law, centralisation, and hero-worship, is absolutely incapable 
of understanding the substance of that movement, which came 
from beneath. In France, Augustin Thierry and Sismondi, 
who both wrote in the first half of this century and who had 
really understood that period, have had no followers up to 
the present time; and now only M. Lachaire timidly tries to 
follow the lines of research indicated by the great historian 
of the Merovingian and the communalist period (Augustin 
Thierry). This is why, in Germany, the awakening of stud- 
ies of this period and a vague comprehension of its spirit 
are only just now coming to the front. And this is why, in 
England, one finds a true comprehension of the twelfth cen- 
tury in the poet William Morris rather than amongst the his- 
torians, — Green (in the later part of his life) having been 
the only one who was capable of understanding it at all. 

The commune of the Middle Ages takes its origin, on the 
one hand, from the village community, on the other from 
those thousands of fraternities and guilds which were con- 
stituted outside territorial unions. It was a federation of 
these two kinds of unions, developed under the protection 
of the fortified enclosure and the turrets of the city. 

In many a region it was a natural growth. Elsewhere — 
and this is the rule in Western Europe — it was the result 
of a revolution. When the inhabitants of a borough felt 
themselves sufficiently protected by their walls, they made a 
" con-juration." They mutually took the oath to put aside 



KROPOTKIN 16 

all pending qu3stions concerning feuds arisen from insults, 
assaults, or wounds, and they swore that henceforth in the 
quarrels that should arise they would never again have re- 
course to personal revenge or to a judge other than the syn- 
dics nominated by themselves in the guild and the city. 

This was long since the regular practice in every art or 
good-neighborship guild, in every sworn fraternity. In every 
village commune such had formerly been the custom, be- 
fore bishop or kinglet had succeeded in introducing — and 
later in enforcing — his judge. Now the hamlets and the 
parishes which constituted the borough, as well as all the 
guilds and fraternities that had developed there, considered 
themselves a single amitas. They named their judges and 
swore permanent union between all these groups. 

A charter was hastily drawn up and accepted. In case 
of need they sent for the copy of a charter from some small 
neighboring commune (we know hundreds of these charters 
to-day), and the commune was constituted. The bishop or 
prince, who had up till then been judge of the commune and 
had often become more or less its master, had only to recog- 
nize the accomplished fact, or else to fight the young " con- 
juration " by force of arms. Often the king — that is to 
say, the prince who tried to gain superiority over other princes, 
and whose coffers were always empty — " granted " the char- 
ter, for ready money. He thus renounced imposing his judge 
on the commune, while giving himself importance before other 
feudal lords. But this was in nowise the rule: hundreds of 
communes lived v/ithout any other sanction than their own 
good pleasure, their ramparts, and their lances. 

In a hundred years this movement spread, with striking 
unity, to the whole of Europe, — by imitation, observe well, 
— including Scotland, France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, 
Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Russia. And to-day, 
when we compare the charters and internal organisations of 
French, English, Scotch, Irish, Scandinavian, German, Bo- 
hemian, Russian, Swiss, Italian, and Spanish communes, we 
are struck with the almost complete sameness of these char- 
ters and of the organisation which grew up under the shelter 



16 KROPOTKIN 

of these " social contracts." What a striking lesson for Ro- 
manists and Hegelists who know no other means to obtain 
a similarity of institutions than servitude before the law! 

From the Atlantic to the middle course of the Volga, and 
from Norway to Italy, Europe was covered with similar 
communes — some becoming populous cities like Florence, 
Venice, Nuremberg, or Novgorod, others remaining boroughs 
of a hundred or even twenty families, but nevertheless 
treated as equals by their more or less prosperous sisters. 

Organisms full of vigor, the communes evidently grew dis- 
similar in their evolution. Geographical position, the char- 
acter of external commerce, the obstacles to be vanquished 
outside, gave every commune its own history. But for all, 
the principle was the same. Pskov in Russia and Brugge 
in Flanders, a Scotch borough of three hundred inhabitants 
and rich Venice with its islands, a borough in the North of 
France or in Poland and Florence the Beautiful represent 
the same amitas, — the same fellowship of village communes 
and of associated guilds, the same constitution in its general 
outline. 

Generally, the town, whose enclosure grows in length and 
breadth with the population and surrounds itself with higher 
and higher towers, each tower erected by such and such a 
parish or such a guild and having its own individual character, 
— generally, I say, the town is divided into four, five, or six 
districts or sections, which radiate from the citadel to the 
ramparts. In preference each of these districts is inhabited 
by one " art " or craft, whereas new trades — the " young 
arts " — occupy the suburbs, which will soon be enclosed in 
a new fortified circle. 

The street, or parish, represents a territorial unit, corre- 
sponding to the ancient village community. Each street or 
parish has its popular assembly, its forum, its popular tri- 
bunal, its elected priest, militia, banner, and often its seal 
as a symbol of sovereignty. It is federated with other streets, 
but it nevertheless keeps its independence. 

The professional unit, which often corresponds, or nearly 



KROPOTKIN 17 

so, with the district or section, is the guild — the trade union. 
This union also retains its saints, its assembly, its forum, 
its judges. It has its treasury, its landed property, its militia 
and banner. It also has its seal, and it remains sovereign. 
In case of war, should it think right, its militia will march 
and join forces with those of other guilds, and it will plant 
its banner side by side with the great banner, or carosse (cart), 
of the city. 

And lastly, the city is the union of districts, streets, parishes, 
and guilds, and it has its plenary assembly of all inhabit- 
ants in the large forum, its great belfry, its elected judges, 
its banner for rallying the militia of the guilds and districts. 
It negotiates as a sovereign with other cities, federates with 
whom it likes, concludes national and foreign alliances. Thus 
the English " Cinque Ports " around Dover are federated 
with French and Netherland ports on the other side of the 
Channel; the Russian Novgorod is the ally of Scandinavian, 
Germanic Hansa, and so on. In its external relations, every 
city possesses all the prerogatives of the modern State; and 
from that time forth is constituted, by free contracts, that body 
of agreements which later on became known as International 
Law, and was placed under the sanction of public opinion 
of all cities, while later on it was more often violated than 
respected by the States. 

How often a city, not being able to decide a dispute in a 
complicated case, sends for " finding the sentence " to a 
neighboring city ! How often the ruling spirit of the time 
— arbitration, rather than the judge's authority — is mani- 
fested in the fact of two communities taking a third as ar- 
bitrator ! 

Trade unions behave in the same way. They carry on 
their commercial and trade affairs beyond the cities and make 
treaties, without taking their nationalities into account. And 
when, in our ignorance, we talk boastingly of our international 
workers' congresses we forget that international trade con- 
gresses and even apprentices' congresses were already held 
in the fifteenth century. 



18 KROPOTKIN 

Lastly, the city either defends itself against aggressors 
and wages its own stubborn wars against neighboring feudal 
lords, nominating each year one or rather two military com- 
manders of its militias, or else accepting a " military de- 
fender " — a prince or duke — who is chosen by the city for 
a year, and whom it can dismiss when it pleases. It usually 
delivers up to this military defender the produce of judicial 
fines for the maintenance of his soldiers; but it forbids him 
to interfere with the business of the city. Or lastly, too 
feeble to emancipate itself entirely from its neighbors, the 
feudal vultures, the city will retain, as a more or less per- 
manent military protector, a bishop or a prince of some family 
— Guelf or Ghibelline in Italy, from the family of Rurik in 
Russia or of Olgerd in Lithuania. But it will watch with 
jealousy that the bishop's or prince's authority shall not ex- 
tend beyond the soldiers encamped in the castle. It will 
even forbid them to enter the town without permission. You 
no doubt know that even at the present day the Queen of 
England cannot enter the City of London without the Lord 
Mayor's permission. 

I should like to speak to you at length about the economic 
life of cities in the Middle Ages; but I am obliged to pass 
it over in silence. It was so varied that it would need rather 
full development. Suffice it to remark that internal com- 
merce was always carried on by the guilds, not by isolated 
artisans, the prices being fixed by mutual agreement; that 
at the beginning of that period, external commerce was 
carried on exclusively by the city; that commerce only be- 
came the monopoly of the merchants' guild later on, and still 
later of isolated individuals; that never was any work done 
on Sunday, or on Saturday afternoon (bathing day) ; lastly, 
that the city purchased the chief necessaries for the life of 
its inhabitants — corn, coal, etc. — and delivered these to the 
inhabitants at cost price. (This custom of the city making 
purchases of grain was retained in Switzerland till the middle 
of our century.) In fact, it is proved by a mass of docu- 
ments of all kinds that humanity has never known, either be- 
fore or after, a period of relative well-being as perfectly 



KROPOTKIN 

assured to all as existed in the cities of the Middle Ages. 
The present poverty ;, insecurity^ and over-work were abso- 
lutely unknown then. 



With these elements — liberty, organisation from simple to 
complex, production and exchange by trade unions (guilds), 
commerce with foreign parts carried on by the city itself, 
and the buying of main provisions by the city — with these 
elements, the towns of the Middle Ages, during the first two 
centuries of their free life, became centres of well-being for 
all the inhabitants. They were centres of opulence and civili- 
zation such as we have not seen since. 

Consult documents that allow of establishing the rates of 
wages for work in comparison with the price of provisions 
(Rogers has done it for England and a great number of writers 
have done it for Germany) and you will see that the work 
of the artisan, and even of a simple day-laborer, was remu- 
nerated at that time by a wage not even reached by skilled 
workmen nowadays. The account-books of the University 
of Oxford and of certain English estates, also those of a 
great number of German and Swiss towns, are there to testify 
to this. 

On the other hand, consider the artistic finish and the 
quantity of decorative work which a workman of those days 
used to put into the beautiful work of art he did, as well as 
into the simplest thing of domestic life, — a railing, a candle- 
stick, an article of pottery, — and you see at once that he 
did not know the pressure, the hurry, the overwork of our 
times. He could forge, sculpture, weave, embroider at his 
leisure, as but a very small number of artist-workers can do 
nowadays. And if we glance over the donations to the 
churches and to houses which belonged to the parish, to the 
guild, or to the city, be it in works of art — in decorative panels, 
sculptures, cast or wrought iron and even silver work — or in 
simple mason's or carpenter's work, we understand what degree 
of well-being those cities had realized in their midst. We can 
conceive the spirit of research and invention that prevailed, 



20 KROPOTKIN 

the breath of liberty that inspired their works, the senti- 
ment of fraternal solidarity that grew up in those guilds in 
which men of the same craft were united not only by the 
mercantile and technical side of a trade but also by bonds 
of sociability and fraternity. Was it not, in fact, the guild- 
law that two brothers were to watch at the bedside of every 
sick brother; and that the guild would take care of burying 
the dead brother or sister — a custom which called for devo- 
tion, in those times of contagious diseases and plagues, — 
follow him to the grave, and take care of his widow and 
children ? 

Black misery, depression, the uncertainty of to-morrow 
for the greater number, which characterize our modern cities, 
were absolutely unknown in those " oases sprung up in the 
twelfth century in the middle of the feudal forest." In those 
cities, under the shelter of their liberties acquired through 
the impulse of free agreement and free initiative, a whole new 
civilization grew up and attained such expansion that the like 
has not been seen since. 

All modern industry comes to us from those cities. In 
three centuries, industries and arts developed there to such 
perfection that our century has been able to surpass them 
only in rapidity of production, but rarely in quality and very 
rarely in beauty of the produce. In the higher arts, which 
we try in vain to revive to-day, have we surpassed the beauty 
of Raphael, the vigor and audacity of Michel Angelo, the 
science and art of Leonardo da Vinci, the poetry and language 
of Dante, or the architecture to which we owe the cathedrals 
of Laon, Rheims, Cologne (" the people were its masons " 
Victor Hugo has said so well), the treasures of beauty of 
Florence and Venice, the town halls of Bremen and Prague, 
the towers of Nuremberg and Pisa, and so on ad infinitum^ 
All these great conquests of art were the product of that 
period. 

Do you wish to measure the progress of that civilization 
at a glance .f* Compare the dome of St. Mark in Venice to 
the rustic arch of the Normans, Raphael's picture to the naive 
embroideries and carpets of Bayeux, the mathematical and 
physical instruments and clocks of Nuremberg to the sand 



KROPOTKIN 21 

clocks of the preceding centuries, Dante's sonorous language 
to the barbarous Latin of the tenth century. A new world 
has opened up between the two ! 

Never, with the exception of that other glorious period 
of ancient Greece (free cities again) had humanity made such 
a stride forward. Never, in two or three centuries, had man 
undergone so profound a change or so extended his power 
over the forces of nature. 

You may perhaps think of the progress of civilization in 
our own century, which is ceaselessly boasted of. But in 
each of its manifestations it is but the child of the civiliza- 
tion which grew up in the midst of free communes. All the 
great discoveries which have made modern science, — the 
compass, the clock, the watch, printing, the maritime dis- 
coveries, gunpowder, the law of gravitation, the law of atmos- 
pheric pressure of which the steam-engine is but a develop- 
ment, the rudiments of chemistry, the scientific method already 
pointed out by Roger Bacon and practised in Italian uni- 
versities, — where do all these come from, if not from the 
free cities which developed under the shelter of communal 
liberties ? 

But you may say, perhaps, that I forget the conflicts, the 
internal struggles, of which the history of these communes is 
full, — the street tumults, the ferocious battles sustained 
against the landlords, the insurrections of " young arts " 
against the " ancient arts," the blood that was shed and the 
reprisals w^hich took place in these struggles. 

I forget nothing. But, like Leo and Botta, the two his- 
torians of mediaeval Italy, like Sismondi, like Ferrari, Gino 
Capponi, and so many others, I see that these struggles were 
the guarantee itself of free life in a free city. I perceive 
a renewal of and a new flight towards progress after each 
one of these struggles. After describing these struggles and 
conflicts in detail, and after measuring the immensity of 
progress realized while these struggles stained the streets with 
blood, — • the well-being assured to all the inhabitants, and the 
renovation of civilization, — Leo and Botta conclude with this 
thought, so true, which often comes to my mind: 



22 KROPOTKIN 

, " A commune only then represents the picture of a moral 
whole^ only then appears universal in its behavior, like the 
human mind itself, when it has admitted conflict and opposi- 
tion in its midst." 

Yes, conflict, freely thrashed out, without an external 
power, the State, throwing its immense weight into the balance, 
in favor of one of the struggling forces. 

Like those two authors, I also think that " far more misery 
has often been caused by imposing peace, because in such 
cases contradictory things were forcibly allied in order to 
create a general politic order, and by sacrificing individuali- 
ties and little organisms in order to absorb them in a vast 
body without color and without life." 

This is why the communes — as long as they themselves 
did not strive to become States and to impose submission 
around them, so as to create " a vast body without color or 
life " — always grew up, always came out younger and 
stronger after every struggle; this is why they flourished at 
the sound of arms in the street, while two centuries later that 
same civilization was crumbling at the noise of wars brought 
about by States. 

In the commune, the struggle was for the conquest and 
maintenance of the liberty of the individual, for the principle 
of federation, for the right to unite and act; whereas the 
wars of the States aimed to destroy these liberties, to sub- 
jugate the individual, to annihilate free agreement, to unite 
men in one and the same servitude before the king, the judge, 
the priest, and the State. 

There lies all the difference. There are struggles and con- 
flicts that kill, and there are those that launch humanity 
forwards. 

VI 

In the course of the sixteenth century, modern barbarians 
come and destroy the whole civilization of the cities of the 
Middle Ages. These barbarians do not completely annihilate 
it; they cannot do so, but at least they check it in its progress 
for two or three centuries. They drive it in a new direction. 

They fetter the individual, they take all his liberties 



KROPOTKIN 2S 

away, they order him to forget the unions which formerly 
were based on free initiative and free agreement, and their 
aim is to level the whole of society in the same submission 
to the master. They destroy all bonds between men, by de- 
claring that State and Church alone must henceforth con- 
stitute the union between the subjects of a State — that only 
Church and State have the mission of watching over industrial, 
commercial, judiciary, artistic, and passional interests, for 
which men of the twelfth century had been wont to unite 
directly. 

And who are those barbarians ? It is the State, — the Triple 
Alliance, constituted at last, of the military chief, the Roman 
judge, and the priest, the three forming a mutual insurance 
for domination ; the three united in one power that will com- 
mand in the name of the interests of society and will crush 
that society. 

We naturally ask ourselves how these new barbarians could 
get the mastery over communes, formerly so powerful. 
Whence did they get their strength for conquest? 

That strength they first of all found in the village. As 
the communes of ancient Greece did not manage to abolish 
slavery, so the communes of the Middle Ages were not able 
to emancipate the peasant from serfdom at the same time 
that they emancipated the citizen. 

It is true that nearly everywhere, at the time of his emanci- 
pation, the citizen — himself an artisan-cultivator — had tried 
to induce the country folk to help in his enfranchisement. 
Durng two centuries, the citizens of Italy, Spain, and Ger- 
many carried on a stubborn war against feudal lords. 
Prodigies of heroism and perseverance were displayed by 
citizens in that war against the feudal castles. They ex- 
hausted themselves to become masters of the castles of feudal- 
ism and to cut down the feudal forest that enveloped them. 

But they only half succeeded. Then, tired of war, they 
made peace over the head of the peasant. To buy peace they 
delivered the peasant up to the lord, outside the territory 
conquered by the commune. In Italy and Germany they 
even ended by recognizing the lord as fellow citizen on con- 



24 KROPOTKIN 

dition that he should reside within the commune; in other 
parts they ended by sharing his domination over the peasant. 
And the lord avenged himself on these common people, whom 
he hated and despised, by drenching their streets in blood 
during the struggles of noble families and acts of revenge 
that were not carried before communal judges and syndics, 
whom the nobles despised, but were settled by the sword in 
the street. 

The nobles demoralised the towns by their munificence, 
their intrigues, their great style of living, by their education 
received at the bishop's or the king's court. They made the 
citizens espouse their family struggles. And the citizen ended 
by imitating the lord, and became a lord in his turn, enrich- 
ing himself, he too, by the labor of serfs encamped in the 
villages outside the city walls. After which the peasant lent 
assistance to nascent kings, emperors, tsars, and popes, when 
they began to build their kingdoms and to bring the towns 
under subjection. When not marching by their orders, the 
peasant left them free to act. 

It is in the country, in fortified castles, situated in the midst 
of rural populations, that royalty was slowly constituted. In 
the twelfth century it existed but in name, and to-day we 
know what to think of the rogues, chiefs of little bands of 
brigands, who adorned themselves with the title of king, 
which after all (as Augustin Thierry has so well demon- 
strated) had very little meaning at that time; in fact, the 
Norse fishermen had their " Nets' Kings," and even the 
beggars had their " Kings " — the word having then simply 
the signification of " temporary leader." 

Slowly, tentatively, a baron more powerful or more cun- 
ning than the others succeeded here and there in rising above 
the rest. The Church no doubt bestirred itself to support 
him. And by force, cunning, money, sword, and even poison 
in case of need, one of these feudal barons would become 
great at the expense of the others. But it was never in the 
free cities, which had their noisy forum, their Tarpeian rock, 
or their river for the tyrants, that royal authority succeeded 
in constituting itself; it was always in the country, in the 
village. 



KROPOTKIN 25 

After having vainly tried to constitute this authority in 
Rheims or in Lyons, it was established in Paris, — an agglom- 
eration of villages and boroughs surrounded by a rich country, 
which had not yet known the life of free cities; it was estal)- 
lished in Westminster, at the gates of populous London City; 
it was established in the Kremlin, built in the midst of rich 
villages on the banks of the Moskva, after having failed at 
Souzdal and Vladimir. But never in Novgorod or Pskov, in 
Nuremberg or Florence, could royal authority be consolidated. 

The neighboring peasants supplied them with grain, horses, 
and men ; and commerce — royal, not communal — increased 
the wealth of the growing tyrants. The Church looked after 
their interests. It protected them, came to their succour with 
its treasure chests; it invented a saint and miracles for their 
royal town. It encircled with its veneration Notre-Dame of 
Paris or the Virgin of Iberia at Moscow. And while the 
civilization of free cities, emancipated from the bishops, took 
its youthful bound, the Church worked steadily to recon- 
stitute its authority by the intermediary of nascent royalty; 
it surrounded with its tender care, its incense, and its ducats, 
the family cradle of the one whom it had finally chosen, 
in order to rebuild with him, and through him, the ecclesiasti- 
cal authority. In Paris, Moscow, Madrid, and Prague you 
see the Church bending over the royal cradle, a lighted torch 
in its hand. 

Hard at work, strong in its State education, leaning on the 
man of will or cunning whom it sought out in any class of 
society, learned in intrigue as well as in Roman and Byzantine 
law, you see the Church marching without respite towards 
its ideal: the Hebrew King, absolute, but obeying the high 
priest — the simple secular arm of ecclesiastical power. 

In the sixteenth century the long work of the two con- 
spirators is already in force. A king already rules over the 
barons, his rivals, and that force will alight on the free cities 
to crush them in their turn. 

Besides, the towns of the sixteenth century were not what 

they were in the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries. 

They were born out of libertarian revolution. But they 



26 KROPOTKIN 

had not the courage to extend their ideas of equality, either 
to the neighboring rural districts or even to those citizens 
who had later on established themselves in their enclosures, 
refuges of liberty, there to create industrial arts. A distinc- 
tion between the old families who had made the revolution 
of the twelfth century — or curtly, " the families " — and the 
others who established themselves later on in the city, is 
to be met with in all towns. The old " Merchant Guild " had 
no desire to receive the new-comers. It refused to incor- 
porate the " young arts " for commerce. And from simple 
clerk of the city it became the go-between, the intermediary, 
who enriched itself by distant commerce, and who imported 
oriental ostentation. Later on the " Merchant Guild " allied 
itself to the lord and the priest, or it went and sought the 
support of the nascent king, to maintain its monopoly, its 
right to enrichment. Having thus become personal instead 
of communal, commerce killed the free city. 

Besides, the guilds of ancient trades, of which the city and 
its government were composed at the outset, would not recog- 
nise the same rights to the young guilds, formed later on 
by the younger trades. These had to conquer their rights 
by a revolution. And that is what they did everywhere. 
But while that revolution became, in most large cities, the 
starting of a renewal of life and arts (this is well seen in 
Florence), in other cities it ended in the victory of the richer 
orders over the poorer ones — of the " fat people " (popolo 
grasso) over the " low people " (popolo basso) — in a despotic 
crushing of the masses, in numberless transportations and exe- 
cutions, especially when lords and priests took part in it. 

And — need we say it.f^ — it was " the defence of the poorer 
orders " that the king, who had received Macchiavelli's 
lessons, took later on as a pretext when he came to knock 
at the gates of the free cities ! 

And then the cities had to die, because the ideas them- 
selves of men had changed. The teaching of canonical and 
Roman law had perverted them. 

The European of the twelfth century was essentially a 
federalist^ — a man of free initiative, of free agreement^ of 



KROPOTKIN 27 

unions freely consented to. He saw in the individual the 
starting point of all society. He did not seek salvation in 
obedience; he did not ask for a savior of society. The idea 
of Christian or Roman discipline was unknown to him. 

But under the influence of the Christian Church, always 
fond of authority, always zealous to impose its rule on the 
souls and especially on the arms of the faithful; and on the 
other hand, under the influence of Roman law, which already, 
since the twelfth century, invaded the courts of the powerful 
lords, the kings, and the popes, and soon became a favorite 
study in the universities, — under the influence of these two 
teachings, which agreed so well although they were enemies 
at the beginning, the minds of men grew depraved in propor- 
tion as priest and legist triumphed. 

Men became enamored of authority. If a revolution of the 
lower trades was accomplished in a commune, the commune 
called in a savior. It gave itself a dictator, a municipal 
Caesar, and it endowed him with full powers to exterminate 
the opposite party. And the dictator profited by it, with all 
the refinement of cruelty that the Church or the examples 
which were brought from the despotic kingdoms of the East 
inspired him with. 

The Church, of course, supported that Caesar. Had it not 
always dreamt of the biblical king, who kneels before the 
high priest and is his docile tool.'* Had it not, with all its 
might, hated the ideas of rationalism which inspired the free 
towns during the first Renaissance, — that of the twelfth 
century, — as also those " pagan " ideas which brought man 
back to Nature under the influence of the rediscovery of 
Greek civilisation; as also, later on, those ideas which in the 
name of primitive Christianity incited men against the pope, 
the priest, and faith in general? Fire, wheel, gibbet — these 
weapons so. dear to the Church in all times — were put into 
play against those heretics. And whoever was the tool, — pope, 
king, or dictator, — it was of little importance to the Church, 
so long as the wheel and the gibbet worked against heretics. 

And under the tv/ofold teaching of the Roman legist and the 
priest, the old federalist spirit, the spirit of free initiative 
and free agreement, was dying out to make room for the 



28 KROPOTKIN 

spirit of discipline, organisation, and pyramidal authority. 
The rich and the poor alike asked for a savior. 

And when the savior presented himself, — when the king, 
who had become enriched far from the forum's tumult, in 
some town of his creation, leaning on the wealthy Church, 
and followed by vanquished nobles and peasants, — when the 
king knocked at the city gates, promising the " lower orders " 
his mighty protection against the rich and the obedient rich 
his protection against the revolting poor, then the towns, which 
themselves were already undermined by the canker of author- 
ity, had no longer the strength to resist. They opened their 
gates to the king. 

And then the Mongols had conquered and devastated eastern 
Europe in the thirteenth century, and an empire was spring- 
ing up out there in Moscow, under the protection of the 
Tartar Khans and the Russian Christian Church. The Turks 
had come and settled in Europe, and pushed as far as Vienna 
in 1453, devastating everything on their path; and powerful 
States were being constituted in Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, 
and in the centre of Europe. While at the other extremity, 
the war of extermination against the Moors in Spain allowed 
of another powerful empire to constitute itself in Castille and 
Aragon, supported by the Roman Church and the Inquisition 
— the sword and the stake. 

As the communes themselves were becoming little States, 
these little States were inevitably doomed to be swallowed 
up by the big ones. 

VII 

The victory of the State over the communes and the fed- 
eralist institutions of the Middle Ages did not take place 
straightway. At one time the State was so threatened that 
its victory seemed doubtful. 

A great popular movement, religious in form and expres- 
sion, but eminently communistic in its aspirations and striving 
at equality, originated in the towns and rural parts of central 
Europe. 



KROPOTKIN 29 

Already in the fourteenth century (in 1358 in France and 
1381 in England) two great similar movements had taken 
place. Two powerful revolts, that of the Jacquerie and that 
of Wat Tyler, had shaken society to its foundations. Both, 
however, had been principally directed against the feudal 
lords. Both were defeated; but the peasant revolt in Eng- 
land completely put an end to serfdom, and the Jacquerie in 
France so checked it in its development that henceforth the 
institution of serfdom could only vegetate, without ever attain- 
ing the development it subsequently attained in Germany 
and in eastern Europe. 

Now, in the sixteenth century a similar movement took 
place in central Europe. Under the name of " Hussite " in 
Bohemia, " Anabaptist " in Germany, Switzerland, and the 
Netherlands, and of " Troubled Times " in Russia (at the 
beginning of the next century), it was over and above a 
struggle against feudal lords — it was a complete revolt 
against Church and State, against Canonic and Roman law, 
in the name of primitive Christianity. 

This movement, which is only just beginning to be under- 
stood, was for many years travestied by State and ecclesiasti- 
cal historians. 

The absolute liberty of the individual — who must only 
obey the commandments of his conscience — and Communism 
were the watchwords of this revolt. And it was only later, 
when Church and State succeeded in exterminating its most 
ardent defenders, and juggled with it to their own profit, 
that this movement, diminished and deprived of its revolution- 
ary character, became Luther's Reformation. 

It began by Communist Anarchism, preached and in some 
places practised. And if we set aside the religious formulae, 
which are a tribute to that epoch, we find in it the very 
essence of the current of ideas which Anarchism represents to- 
day: the negation of all law, State or divine, the conscience 
of each individual being his one and only law; the commune, 
absolute master of its destinies, retaking its lands from 
feudal lords, and refusing all personal or monetary service 
to the State; in fact, Communism and equality put into prac- 



ao Kropotkin 

tice. Moreover, when Denck, one of the philosophers of the 
Anabaptist movement, was asked if he did not at least recog- 
nise the authority of the Bible, he answered that the only 
obligatory rule of conduct is the one that each individual finds, 
for himself, in the Bible. And yet these very formulae, so 
vague, borrowed from ecclesiastical slang, this authority of 
" the book " from which it is so easy to borrow arguments for 
and against Communism, for and against authority, and so 
uncertain when it comes clearly to define what liberty is, these 
very religious tendencies of the revolt, — did they not already 
contain the germ of an unavoidable defeat? 

Originating in towns, the movement soon spread to the 
country. The peasants refused to obey anybody, and plant- 
ing an old shoe on a pike by way of a flag they took back 
the lands which the lords had seized from the village com- 
munities; they broke their bonds of serfdom, drove away 
priest and judge, and constituted themselves into free com- 
munes. And it was only by the stake, the wheel, and the 
gibbet, it was only by the massacre of more than a hundred 
thousand peasants in a few years, that royal or imperial power, 
allied to the papal or reformed church (Luther inciting to 
massacre peasants more violently even than the Pope), put 
an end to these risings that had for a moment threatened the 
constitution of nascent States. 

Born of popular Anabaptism, the Lutheran Reformation, 
leaning on the State, massacred the people and crushed the 
movement from which it originally had derived its strength. 
The survivors of this immense wave of thought took refuge 
in the communities of the " Moravian Brothers," who, in their 
turn, were destroyed by Church and State. Those among 
them who were not exterminated sought shelter, some in 
the south-east of Russia, others in Greenland, where to this 
day they have been able to live in communities and to refuse 
all service to the State. 

Henceforth, the State's existence was secure. The lawyer, 
the priest, and the soldier-lord, having constituted a solid 
alliance around the thrones, could carry on their work of 
annihilation. 



KROPOTKIN 31 

Have we not all learned at school that the State rendered 
great service in constituting national unions on the ruins of 
feudal society, — unions made impracticable in earlier times 
by the rivalry of cities ? We have all learned it in school and 
we have all believed it in manhood. 

And nevertheless to-day we learn that, in spite of all rival- 
ries, mediaeval cities had already worked during four cen- 
turies to constitute these unions by federation, freely con- 
sented to, and that they had fully succeeded in that work of 
consolidation. 

The Lombard Union, for example, included the cities of 
upper Italy and had its federal treasury in safe keeping 
in Genoa and Venice. Other federations, such as the Tuscan 
Union, the Rhenan Union (comprising sixty towns), the fed- 
erations of Westphalia, of Bohemia, of Servia, of Poland, 
and of Russian towns, covered Europe. At the same time, 
the commercial union of the Hansa included Scandinavian, 
German, Polish, and Russian towns throughout the basin of 
the Baltic. 

All the elements, as well as the fact itself, of large human 
agglomerations, freely constituted, were there already. 

Do you wish for a living proof of these groups ? You have 
it in Switzerland. There the union asserted itself iirst be- 
tween village communes (the old cantons), in the same way 
that it was constituted in France in the Laonnais. And 
as in Switzerland the separation between town and village 
was never so great as it was for towns carrying on an ex- 
tensive and distant commerce, the Swiss towns lent a hand 
to the peasant insurrections of the sixteenth century, and the 
union encompassed both towns and villages and constituted 
a federation that still exists to-day. 

But the State, by its very essence, cannot tolerate free 
federation; because the latter represents that nightmare of 
the legist, " the State within the State." The State does 
not recognize a freely adopted union working within itself. 
It only deals with subjects. The State alone, and its prop 
the Church, arrogate to themselves the right of being the 
connecting link between men. 

Consequently the State must perforce annihilate cities based 



32 K R O P O T K I N 

on direct union between citizens. It must abolish all union 
in the city, abolish the city itself, abolish all direct union 
between cities. For the federative principle it must substi- 
tute the principle of submission and discipline. Submission 
is its substance. Without this principle it leaves off being 
the State; it becomes a federation. 

And the sixteenth century — century of carnage and wars 
— is entirely summed up in this war waged by the growing 
States against the cities and the federations. The towns 
are besieged, taken by assault, pillaged; their inhabitants are 
decimated or transported. The State is victorious all along 
the line. 

And the consequences are these. 

In the fifteenth century Europe was covered by rich cities, 
whose artisans, masons, weavers, and carvers produced mar- 
vels of art, whose universities laid the foundation of science, 
whose caravans travelled over continents, and whose vessels 
ploughed rivers and seas. 

What was left of them two centuries later? Towns that 
had numbered fifty or a hundred thousand inhabitants and 
that had possessed (it was so in Florence) more schools and, 
in the communal hospitals, more beds per inhabitant than are 
possessed to-day by the towns best endowed in this respect, 
had become rotten boroughs. Their inhabitants having been 
massacred or transported, the State and Church were seizing 
their riches. Industry was fading under the minute tutelage 
of State officials. Commerce was dead. The very roads that 
formerly united the cities had become absolutely impracti- 
cable in the seventeenth century. 

The State spelt warfare, and wars were devastating Europe 
and completing the ruin of those towns which the State had 
not yet ruined direct. But had not the villages, at least, 
gained by State centralisation.^ Certainly not! Read what 
historians tell us about the style of living in the rural dis- 
tricts of Scotland, Tuscany, and Germany in the fourteenth 
century, and compare their descriptions of that time with 
the misery of England at the beginning of 1648, in France 
under the " sun-king " Louis XIV, in Germany, in Italy, 



KROPOTKIN 33 

everywhere^, after a hundred years of State domination. 

Misery everywhere ! All unanimously recognize it and 
point it out. Wherever serfdom had been abolished it was 
reconstituted in a hundred different forms; wherever it had 
not yet been destroyed it was shaped^ under State protection, 
into a ferocious institution bearing all the characteristics of 
antique slavery, or even worse. 

And could anything else evolve out of this State-produced 
misery, the State's chief anxiety being to annihilate the vil- 
lage community after the town, to destroy all bonds existing 
between peasants, to give over their lands to be pillaged by 
the rich, and to subject them, each individually, to the func- 
tionary, the priest and the lord.^ 



VIII 

To annihilate the independence of cities; to plunder mer- 
chants' and artisans' rich guilds ; to centralise the foreign 
trade of cities into its hands and ruin it; to seize the internal 
administration of guilds, and subject home trade, as well as 
all manufactures, even in the slightest detail, to a swarm of 
functionaries, and by these means kill both industry and arts; 
to seize upon local militias and all municipal administration; 
to crush the weak by taxation for the benefit of the strong; 
and to ruin countries by war, — such was the nascent State's 
behavior towards urban agglomerations in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. 

The same tactics were evidently employed towards villages 
and peasants. As soon as the State felt itself strong enough, 
it destroyed the village commune, ruined the peasants com- 
mitted to its mercy, and plundered the common lands. 

Historians and economists paid by the State have taught us 
that the village commune, having become an obsolete form 
of land-ownership obstructing agricultural progress, was 
bound to disappear by the action of natural economic forces. 
Politicians and bourgeois economists do not tire of repeat- 
ing this even nowadays, and there are revolutionists and 



34 KROPOTKIN 

socialists (those who pretend to be scientific) who recite this 
fable learned in school. 

Yet a more odious falsehood has never been affirmed by 
science. A deliberate falsehood, for history swarms with 
documents amply proving to those who wish to know (in the 
case of France it would almost suffice to read Dalloz) that 
the village commune was first of all deprived by the State of 
its privileges, of its independence, of its juridical and legis- 
lative powers; and that later on its lands were either simply 
stolen by the rich under State protection, or else confiscated 
by the State itself. 

Plundering began as early as the sixteenth century in 
France, and grew apace in the following century. As early as 
1659 the State took the communes under its superior pro- 
tection, and we need only read Louis XIV's edict of 1667 
to learn what plundering of common lands took place at that 
period. " Men have taken possession of lands when it suited 
them. . . . Lands have been divided. ... In order to plun- 
der the communes fictitious debts have been devised." So 
said the " Sun-King " in this edict, — and two years later 
he confiscated for his own benefit all the revenues of the com- 
munes. This is what is called in scientific language a " nat- 
ural death." 

In the following century it is estimated that at least half 
the communal lands were simply appropriated by the aris- 
tocracy and the clergy under State patronage. And yet com- 
munes continued to exist till 1787. The village council met 
under the elm, granted lands, and appointed taxes — the 
documents relating to this are to be found in Babeau {Le 
village sous Vancien regime). Turgot, in the province of 
which he was governor, found the village councils " too noisy " 
and abolished them during his governorship, substituting 
for them assemblies elected among the well-to-do of the vil- 
lage. In 1787, on the eve of the Revolution, the State made 
this measure general in its application. The mir was abol- 
ished, and thus communal affairs fell into the hands of a few 
syndics, elected by the richest bourgeois and peasants. The 
" Constituante " sanctioned this law in December, 1789; and 



KROPOTKIN 35 

the bourgeois, substituting themselves for the nobles, plun- 
dered what remained of communal lands. Many a peasant 
revolt was necessary to force the Convention in 1792 to 
sanction what the rebellious peasants had accomplished in 
the eastern part of France That is to say, the Convention 
ordered the restitution of communal lands to the peasants. 
This only took place there, when the land had already been 
retaken by revolutionary means. It is the fate of all revo- 
lutionary laws to be put into action when they are already 
an accomplished fact. 

Nevertheless the Convention tainted this law with bour- 
geois gall. It decreed that lands retaken from nobles should 
be divided into equal parts among " active citizens " only, 
— that is to say, among the village bourgeois. By one stroke 
of the pen it thus dispossessed " passive citizens," — that is 
to say, the mass of impoverished peasants, who had most need 
of these communal lands. Upon which, fortunately, the 
peasants again revolted, and in 1793 tlie Convention passed 
a new law decreeing the division of communal lands among 
all inhabitants. This was never put into practice, and only 
served as an excuse for new thefts of communal lands. 

Would not such measures suffice to bring about what is 
called the " natural death " of communes ? Yet communes 
still existed. On August 24, 1794, the reaction, being in 
power, struck the final blow. The State confiscated all 
communal lands, and made of them a guarantee fund for the 
public debt, putting them up at auction and selling them to 
its creatures the " Thermidorians." 

This law was happily repealed after being in force three 
years. But, at the same time, communes were abolished, and 
replaced by cantonal councils in order that the State might 
the more easily fill them with its creatures. This lasted till 
1801, when village communes were revived. But then the 
government took it upon itself to appoint mayors and syndics 
in each of the 36,000 communes ! And this absurdity lasted 
till the revolution of July, 1830, after which the law of 1789 
was again put into force. And in the interval communal 



36 KROPOTKIN 

lands were again wholly confiscated by the State in 1813, 
and plundered anew during three years. What remained 
of them was only returned to the communes at the end of that 
period, in 1816. 

This was by no means the end. Every new regime saw 
in communal lands a source of reward for its supporters. 
Therefore at three different intervals since 1830, the first 
time in 1837 and the last under Napoleon III, laws were 
promulgated to force peasants to divide what they possessed 
of forests and common pasture-lands ; and three times the gov- 
ernment was compelled to abrogate this law on account of 
the peasants' resistance. All the same. Napoleon the Third 
was able to profit by it and bag several large estates for his 
favorites. 

These are facts; and this is what, in scientific language, is 
called the " natural death " of the communal landed prop- 
erty under the influence of economic laws ! As well call the 
massacre of a hundred thousand soldiers on a battlefield 
" natural death." 

What happened in France happened also in Belgium, Eng- 
land, Germany, Austria, — in fact everywhere in Europe, 
Slav countries excepted. 

Strange that the periods of plundering the communes 
should correspond in all Western Europe ! The methods alone 
vary. Thus in England those in power did not dare to en- 
act sweeping measures; they preferred passing several thou- 
sands of separate " enclosure acts " by which, in each special 
case, Parliament sanctioned the confiscation of land — it does 
so still — and gave to the squire the right of keeping com- 
mon lands he had fenced in. And notwithstanding that Na- 
ture has ever since respected the narrow furrows by which 
communal fields were temporarily divided among families in 
the villages of England, and that we have clear descriptions 
of this form of landed property at the beginning of the cen- 
tury in the books of a certain Marshall, scientific men (such 
as Seebohm, worthy emulator of Fustel de Coulanges) are 
not wanting to maintain and teach that communes have never 
existed in England save in the form of serfdom! 



KROPOTKIN 37 

We find the same thing going on in Belgium, Germany, 
Italy, and Spain. And in one way or another personal ap- 
propriation of lands formerly communal was almost brought 
to completion towards the middle of this century. Peas- 
ants have only kept scraps of their common lands. This is 
the way in which the mutual assurance of lord, priest, soldier, 
and judge — the State — has behaved toward peasants in 
order to despoil them of their last guarantee against misery 
and economic servitude. 

But while organising and sanctioning this plunder, could 
the State respect the institution of the commune as an organ 
of local life.^ Evidently not. 

To allow citizens to constitute a federation among them- 
selves in order to appropriate some functions of the State 
would have been a contradiction of principle. The State 
demands personal and direct submission of its subjects with- 
out intermediate agents; it requires equality in servitude; it 
cannot allow " the State within the State." 

Therefore as soon as the State began to constitute itself in 
the sixteenth century it set to work to destroy all bonds of 
union that existed among citizens, both in towns and villages. 
If under the name of municipal institutions it tolerated any 
vestiges of autonomy — never of independence — it was only 
with a fiscal aim to lighten the central budget as far as pos- 
sible; or else to allow the provincial well-to-do to enrich 
themselves at the people's expense, as was the case in Eng- 
land, and is so still in institutions and in customs. 

This is easily understood. Customary law naturally per- 
tains to local life, and Roman law to centralisation of power. 
The two cannot live side by side, and the one must kill the 
other. 

That is why under French rule in Algeria, when a Kabyle 
djemmah — a village commune — wants to plead for its lands, 
every inhabitant of the commune must bring his isolated ac- 
tion before the judge, who will hear fifty or even two hundred 
isolated actions sooner than hear the collective suit of the 
djemmah. The Jacobin code of the Convention (known un- 
der the name of Code Napoleon) does not recognize custom- 
ary law, it only recognizes Roman or rather Byzantine law. 



38 KROPOTKIN 

That is why in France when the wind blows down a tree 
on the national highway^ or a peasant gives a stonebreaker 
two or three francs in preference to the unpleasant task of 
repairing the communal road himself^ it is necessary for 
twelve or fifteen employees of the Home Office and Treasury 
to be put in motion, and for more than fifty documents to be 
exchanged between these austere functionaries, before the tree 
can be sold or the peasant receives permission to deposit two 
or three francs into the communal treasury. Should you have 
any doubts about this, you will find these fifty documents re- 
capitulated and duly numbered by M. Tricoche in the Journal 
des Economistes. 

This under the Third Republic, be it understood; for I do 
not speak of the barbarous methods of the ancient regime, 
that limited itself to five or six documents. No doubt scien- 
tists will tell you that at that barbarous period State con- 
trol was only fictitious. 

And if it were only this ! After all, it would be but twenty 
thousand functionaries too many, and a thousand million 
francs more added to the budget. A detail for the lovers 
of "order" and levelling! 

But there is worse at the bottom of all this. The prin- 
ciple kills everything. 

The peasants of a village have a thousand interests in 
common: interests of economy, neighborhood, and constant 
intercourse. They are perforce compelled to unite for a thou- 
sand divers things. But the State cannot allow them to unite. 
It gives them school and priest, police and judge; that must 
suffice them, and should other interests arise they must ap- 
ply in the regular way to Church and State. 

Thus till 1883 it was severely forbidden to the villagers of 
France to unite, were it only to buy chemical manure or to 
irrigate their fields. It was only in 1883 that the Republic 
granted this right to peasants when it voted the law on unions, 
hampered by many a precaution and obstacle. 

And we with our faculties blunted by State education re- 
joice at the sudden progress accomplished by agricultural 
syndicates, without blushing at the fact that this right of 



KROPOTKIN Sd 

union of which peasants were deprived for centuries belonged 
to them without contention in the Middle Ages, — belonged to 
every man, free or serf. Slaves that we are, we believe it 
to be a " conquest of democracy " ! 



IX 

" If you have any common interests in the city or the vil- 
lage, ask the Church and the State to look after them. But 
you are forbidden to combine in a direct way to settle mat- 
ters for yourself ! " Such is the formula reechoing through- 
out Europe since the sixteenth century. Already in an edict 
of Edward III, issued at the end of the fourteenth century, 
we read that " all unions, combinations, meetings, organised 
societies, statutes, and oaths already established or to be es- 
tablished by carpenters and masons, will henceforth be null 
and void." But when the defeat of the towns and of the 
popular insurrection of which we have spoken was completed, 
the State boldly laid hands on all the institutions (guilds, fra- 
ternities, etc.) which used to bind artisans and peasants to- 
gether, and annihilated them. 

This is plainly seen in England, where a mass of docu- 
ments exists showing every step of that annihilation. Little 
by little the State laid hands on all guilds and fraternities. 
It pressed them closely, abolished their leagues, their festi- 
vals, their aldermen, and replaced these by its own function- 
aries and tribunals; and at the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, under Henry VIII, the State simply confiscated every- 
thing possessed by the guilds without further ado. The heir 
to the great protestant king finished his father's work.^ 

It was robbery carried on in open daylight, " without ex- 
cuse " as Thorold Rogers has so well put it. And it is this 
robbery which the so-called scientific economists represent 
as the " natural death " of the guilds under the influence of 
economic laws ! 

In truth, was it possible for the State to tolerate a guild 
or corporation of a trade, with its tribunal, its militia, its 

1 See Toulmin Smith's work on Guilds. 



40 KROPOTKIN 

treasury, its sworn organisation? For the statesmen this 
was " a State within the State." The State was bound to de- 
stroy the guild, and it destroyed it everywhere: in England, 
in France, in Germany, in Bohemia, preserving only the 
semblance of the guild as an instrument of the exchequer, as 
a part of the vast administrative machine. 

And should we be astonished that guilds, trade-unions, 
and wardenships, deprived of everything that was formerly 
their life and placed under royal functionaries, became in 
the eighteenth century nought but encumbrances and ob- 
stacles to the development of industry, after having been 
the very life of progress four centuries before? The State 
had killed them. In fact it did not content itself with de- 
stroying the autonomous organisation which was necessary 
for the very life of the guilds and impeded the encroachments 
of the State; it did not content itself with confiscating all 
riches and property of the guilds: it appropriated for itself 
all their economical functions as well. 

In a city of the Middle Ages, when interests conflicted in 
a trade, or when two guilds disagreed, there was no other ap- 
peal than to the city. They were forced to settle matters, 
to find some compromise, as all guilds were mutually allied 
in the city. And a compromise was always arrived at, — by 
calling in another city to arbitrate, if necessary. Hence- 
forth, however, the only arbitrator was the State. All lo- 
cal disputes, sometimes of the most insignificant kind, in the 
smallest town of a few hundred inhabitants, had to be piled 
up in the shape of useless documents in the offices of king and 
parliament. We see the English parliament literally inun- 
\ dated with these thousands of petty local squabbles. It then 
\ becomes necessary to have in the capital thousands of func- 
tionaries (venal for the greater part) to classify, read, judge 
I all these documents, to pass judgment on every detail: to regu- 
I late the way to forge a horseshoe, bleach linen, salt herrings, 
I make a barrel, and so on ad infinitum, — and the tide still 
rose ! 

But this was not all. Soon the State laid hands on ex- 
portation. It saw in this commerce a means of enrichment, 
and seized upon it. Formerly, when a dispute arose between 



KROPOTKIN 41 

two towns about the value of exported cloth, the purity of 
wool, or the capacity of barrels of herrings, the two towns 
made remonstrances to each other. If the dispute lasted long, 
they addressed themselves to a third town to step in as ar- 
bitrator (this happened constantly) ; or else a congress of 
guilds of weavers and coopers was convened to regulate inter- 
nationally the quality and value of cloth or the capacity of 
barrels. 

Now, however, the State had stepped in and taken upon \ 
itself to regulate all these contentions from the centre, in • 
Paris or in London. Through its functionaries it regulated 
the capacity of barrels, specified the quality of cloth, or- 
dered the number of threads and their thickness in the warp 
and the woof, and interfered in the smallest details of each 
industry. 

You know the result. Industry under this control was 
dying out in the eighteenth century. 

What had in fact become of Benvenuto Cellini's art under 
State tutelage? Vanished. And the architecture of those 
guilds of masons and carpenters whose works of art we still 
admire.'^ Only look at the hideous monuments of the State 
period, and at one glance you will know that architecture was 
dead, so dead that it has never since been able to recover 
from the blow dealt it by the State. 

What became of the fabrics of Bruges, of the cloth from 
Holland? What became of those blacksmiths, so skilled in 
manipulating iron, who, in each European borough, knew 
how to turn that ungrateful metal into the most exquisite 
decorations? What became of those turners, those clock- 
makers, those fitters, who had made Nuremberg one of the 
glories of the Middle Ages by their instruments of precision? 
Speak of them to James Watt, who for his steam engine 
looked in vain during thirty years for a man who could make 
a fairly round cylinder, and whose machine remained thirty 
years a rough model for want of workmen to construct it ! j 

Such was the result of State interference in the domain i 
of industry. All that the State managed to do was to tighten I 
the screw on the worker, depopulate the land, sow misery . 



42 KROPOTKIN 

in the towns, reduce thousands of beings to the state of starve- 
lings, and impose industrial slavery. 

And it is these miserable wrecks of ancient guilds, these 
organisms mangled and oppressed by the State, that " sci- 
entific " economists have the ignorance to confound with the 
guilds of the Middle Ages ! What the great Revolution swept 
away as harmful to industry was not the guild, or even the 
trade union; it was a piece of machinery both useless and 
harmful. 



History has not been an uninterrupted evolution. At dif- 
ferent intervals evolution has been broken in a certain re- 
gion, to begin again elsewhere. Egypt, Asia, the banks of 
the Mediterranean, Central Europe have in turn been the 
scene of historical developments. But, in every case, the first 
phase of the evolution has been the primitive tribe, passing 
on into a village commune, then into the free city, and finally 
dying out when it reaches the phase of the State. 

In Egypt, civilization began by the primitive tribe. It 
reached the village community phasis, and later on the period 
of free cities; still later that of the State, which, after a 
flourishing period, resulted in the death of the country. 

The evolution began again in Assyria, in Persia, in Pales- 
tine. Again it traversed the same path: the tribe, the vil- 
lage community, the free city, the all-powerful State; and 
finally the result was — death ! 

A new civilization then sprang up in Greece. Always be- 
ginning by the tribe, it slowly reached the village commune, 
then the period of republican cities. In these cities, civili- 
zation reached its highest summits. But the East brought 
to them its poisoned breath, its traditions of despotism. Wars 
and conquests created Alexander's empire of Macedonia. The 
State enthroned itself, killed all civilization, and then came 
— death ! 

Rome in its turn restored civilization. Again we find the 
primitive tribe at its origin, then the village commune, then 



KROPOTKIN 43 

the free city. At that stage it reached the apex of its civili- 
zation. But then came the State, the Empire, and then — 
death ! 

On the ruins of the Roman Empire, Celtic, Germanic, Sla- 
vonian, and Scandinavian tribes began civilization anew. 
Slowly the primitive tribe elaborated its institutions and 
reached the village commune. It remained at that stage till 
the twelfth century. Then rose the Republican cities which 
produced the glorious expansion of the human mind, attested 
by the monuments of architecture, the grand development of 
arts, the discoveries that laid the basis of natural sciences. 
But then came the State. 

Will it again produce death? Of course it will, unless we 
reconstitute Society on a libertarian and anti-State basis. 
Either the State will be destroyed and a new life will begin 
in thousands of centres, on the principle of an energetic initia- 
tive of the individual, of groups, and of free agreement; or 
else the State must crush the individual and local life, it must 
become the master of all the domains of human activity, must 
bring with it its wars and internal struggles for the posses- 
sion of power, its surface-revolutions which only change one 
tyrant for another, and inevitably at the end of this evolution 
— death ! 

Choose yourselves which of the two issues you prefer. 



HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE 

(1821-1862) 

INQUIRY INTO THE INFLUENCE EXERCISED 
BY GOVERNMENT^ 

To any one who has studied history in its original sources, 
the notion that the civilization of Europe is chiefly owing to 
the ability which has been displayed by the different gov- 
ernments, and to the sagacity with which the evils of society 
have been palliated by legislative remedies, must appear so 
extravagant as to make it difficult to refute it with becoming 
gravity. Indeed, of all the social theories which have ever 
been broached, there is none so utterly untenable, and so un- 
sound in all its parts, as this. In the first place, we have the 
obvious consideration that the rulers of a country have, un- 
der ordinary circumstances, always been the inhabitants of 
that country: nurtured by its literature, bred to its traditions, 
and imbibing its prejudices. Such men are, at best, only the 
creatures of the age, never its creators. Their measures are 
the result of social progress, not the cause of it. This may 
be proved, not only by speculative arguments, but also by a 
practical consideration, which any reader of history can 
verify for himself. No great political improvement, no great 
reform, either legislative or executive, has ever been origi- 
nated in any country by its rulers. The first suggesters of 
such steps have invariably been bold and able thinkers, who 
discern the abuse, denounce it, and point out how it is to be 
remedied. But long after this is done, even the most en- 
lightened governments continue to uphold the abuse and re- 
ject the remedy. At length, if circumstances are favorable, 
the pressure from without becomes so strong that the gov- 

1 From the first volume, published in 1857, of this author's stand- 
ard " History of Civilization in England." 

44 



BUCKLE 46 

eminent is obliged to give way; and, the reform being ac- 
complished, the people are expected to admire the wisdom of 
their rulers, by whom all this has been done. That this is 
the course of political improvement must be well known to 
whoever has studied the law-books of different countries in 
connection with the previous progress of their knowledge. 
Full and decisive evidence of this will be brought forward 
in the present work; but, by way of illustration, I may refer 
to the abolition of the corn-laws, undoubtedly one of the most 
remarkable facts in the history of England during this cen- 
tury. The propriety and, indeed, the necessity of their aboli- 
tion is now admitted by every one of tolerable information; 
and the question arises as to how it was brought about. 
Those Englishmen who are little versed in the history of their 
country will say that the real cause was the wisdom of Par- 
liament; while others, attempting to look a little further, will 
ascribe it to the activity of the Anti-Corn-Law League, and 
the consequent pressure put upon Government. But whoever 
will minutely trace the different stages through which this 
great question successively passed will find that the Govern- 
ment, the Legislature, and the League were the unwitting 
instruments of a power far greater than all other powers put 
together. They were simply the exponents of that march of 
public opinion which on this subject had begun nearly a cen- 
tury before their time. The steps of this vast movement I 
shall examine on another occasion; at present it is enough to 
say that soon after the middle of the eighteenth century the 
absurdity of protective restrictions on trade was so fully 
'demonstrated by the political economists as to be admitted by 
/ every man who understood their arguments and had mastered 
/ the evidence connected with them. From this moment, the 
\ repeal of the corn-laws became a matter, not of party, nor of 
\ expediency, but merely of knowledge. Those who knew the 
facts opposed the laws ; those who were ignorant of the facts 
favored the laws. It was, therefore, clear that whenever the 
diffusion of knowledge reached a certain point, the laws must 
fall. The merit of the League was to aid in this diffusion ; the 
merit of the Parliament was to yield to it. It is, however, 
certain that the members both of League and Legislature could 



/ 



46 BUCKLE 

at best only slightly hasten what the progress of knowledge 
rendered inevitable. If they had lived a century earlier they 
would have been altogether powerless, because the age would 
not have been ripe for their labors. They were the crea- 
tures of a movement which began long before any of them 
were born; and the utmost they could do was to put into 
operation what others had taught, and repeat, in louder tones, 
the lessons they had learned from their masters. For it was 
not pretended, they did not even pretend themselves, that 
there was anything new in the doctrines which they preached 
from the hustings, and disseminated in every part of the king- 
dom. The discoveries had long since been made, and were 
gradually doing their work; encroaching upon old errors, and 
making proselytes in all directions. The reformers of our 
time swam with the stream: they aided what it would have 
been impossible long to resist. Nor is this to be deemed a 
slight or grudging praise of the services they undoubtedly 
rendered. The opposition they had to encounter was still 
immense; and it should always be remembered, as a proof 
s of the backwardness of political knowledge and of the in- 
l competence of political legislators, that although the principles 
\ of free trade had been established for nearly a century by a 
\ chain of arguments as solid as those on which the truths of 
'^mathematics are based, they were to the last moment strenu- 
I ously resisted; and it was only with the greatest difficulty that 
i Parliament was induced to grant what the people were de- 
/ termined to have, and the necessity of which had been proved 
by the ablest men during three successive generations. 

I have selected this instance as an illustration, because the 
facts connected with it are undisputed, and, indeed, are fresh 
in the memory of us all. For it was not concealed at the 
time, and posterity ought to know, that this great measure, 
which, with the exception of the Reform Bill, is by far the 
most important ever passed by a British parliament, was, like 
the Reform Bill, extorted from the legislature by a pressure 
from without; that it was conceded, not cheerfully, but with 
fear; and that it was carried by statesmen who had spent 
their lives in opposing what they now suddenly advocated. 
Such was the history of these events; and such likewise has 



BUCKLE 47 

been the history of all those improvements which are impor- 
tant enough to rank as epochs in the history of modern legisla- 
tion. 

Besides this, there is another circumstance worthy the at- 
tention of those writers who ascribe a large part of European 
civilization to measures originated by European governments. 
rThis is, that every great reform which has been effected has 
consisted, not in doing something new, but in undoing some- ^ 
thing old. The most valuable additions made to legislation \ 
have been enactments destructive of preceding legislation^^ 
and the best laws which have been passed have been those 
by which some former laws were repealed. ) In the case just 
mentioned, of the corn-laws, all that was done was to re- 
peal the old laws, and leave trade to its natural freedom. 
When this great reform was accomplished, the only result 
was to place things on the same footing as if legislators had 
never interfered at all. Precisely the same remark is ap- 
plicable to another leading improvement in modern legisla- 
tion, namely, the decrease of religious persecution. This is 
unquestionably an immense boon; though, unfortunately, it 
is still imperfect, even in the most civilized countries. But 
it is evident that the concession merely consists in this: that 
legislators have retraced their own steps, and undone their 
own work. If we examine the policy of the most humane 
and enlightened governments, we shall find this to be the 
course they have pursued. The whole scope and tendency 
of modern legislation is to restore things to that natural chan- 
nel from which the ignorance of preceding legislation has 
driven them. This is one of the great works of the present 
age; and if legislators do it well, they will deserve the grati- 
tude of mankind. But though we may thus be grateful to 
individual lawgivers, we owe no thanks to lawgivers con- 
sidered as a class. For since the most valuable improve- 
ments in legislation are tJiose which subvert preceding legis- 
lation, it is clear that the balance of good cannot be on their 
side. It is clear that the progress of civilization cannot be 
due to those who, on the most important subjects, have done 
so much harm that their successors are considered benefactors 
simply because they reverse their policy, and thus restore 
affairs to the state in which they would have remained if 



48 BUCKLE 

politicians had allowed them to run on in the course which 
the wants of society required. 

Indeed, the extent to which the governing classes have in- 
terfered, and the mischiefs which that interference has pro- 
duced, are so remarkable as to make thoughtful men wonder 
how civilization could advance in the face of such repeated 
obstacles. In some of the European countries the obstacles 
have, in fact, proved insuperable, and the national progress 
is thereby stopped. Even in England, where, from causes 
which I shall presently relate, the higher ranks have for 
some centuries been less powerful than elsewhere, there has 
been inflicted an amount of evil which, though much smaller 
than that incurred in other countries, is sufficiently serious 
to form a melancholy chapter in the history of the human 
mind. To sum up these evils would be to write a history of 
f English legislation; for it may be broadly stated that, with 
/ the exception of certain necessary enactments respecting the 
I preservation of order and the punishment of crime, nearly 
\ every thing which has been done has been done amis^*r^Thus, 
to take only such conspicuous facts as do not admit of con- 
troversy, it is certain that all the most important interests 
have been grievously damaged by the attempts of legislators 
to aid them. >4 Among the accessories of modern civilization 
there is none of greater moment than trade, the spread of 
which has probably done more than any other single agent 
to increase the comfort and happiness of man. But every 
European government which has legislated much respecting 
trade has acted as if its main object were to suppress the 
trade and ruin the traders. Instead of leaving the national 
industry to take its own course, it has been troubled by an 
interminable series of regulations, all intended for its good, 
and all inflicting serious harm^ To such a height has this 
been carried that the commercial reforms which have dis- 
tinguished England during the last twenty years have solely 
consisted in undoing this mischievous and intrusive legisla- 
tion. | The laws formerly enacted on this subject, and too 
many' of which are still in force, are marvellous to contem- 
plate. It is no exaggeration to say that the history of the 



BUCKLE 4d 

commercial legislation of Europe presents every possible con- j 
trivance for hampering the energies of commerce. Indeed, ' 
a very high authority, who has maturely studied this sub- 
ject, has recently declared that if it had not been for smug- 
gling trade could not have been conducted, but must 
have perished in consequence of this incessant interference. 
However paradoxical this assertion may appear, it will be 
- denied by no one who knows how feeble trade once was, 
i and how strong the obstacles were which opposed it.> In, 
\ every quarter, and at every moment, the hand of govern- i 
Iment was feltr^ Duties on importation, and duties on expor- 
' tation ; bounties to raise up a losing trade, and taxes to pull 
down a remunerative one ; this branch of industry forbidden, • 
and that branch of industry encouraged f^'one article of com- 
merce must not be grown, because it was grown in the colonies, 
another article might be grown and bought, but not sold 
again, while a third article might be bought and sold, but not 
leave the country. ♦ Then, too, we find laws to regulate wages; 
laws to regulate prices; laws to regulate profits; laws to 
regulate the interest on money; custom-house arrangements 
of the most vexatious kind, aided! by a complicated scheme 
which was well called the sliding scale, — a scheme of such 
perverse ingenuity that all duties constantly varied on the 
same article, and no man could calculate beforehand what 
he would have to pay. To this uncertainty, itself the bane 
of all commerce, there was added a severity of exaction, felt 
by every class of consumers and producers. The tolls were 
so onerous as to double and often quadruple the cost of pro- 
duction^;^ A system was organized, and strictly enforced, of 
interference with markets, interference with manufactories, 
i interference with machinery, interference even with shops. 
I The towns were guarded by excisemen, and the ports swarmed 
j with tide-waiters, whose sole business was to inspect nearly 
I every process of domestic industry, peer into every package, 
I and tax every article; while, that absurdity might be car- 
I ried to its extreme height, a large part of all this was by way 
f of protection: that is to say, the money was avowedly raised, 
and the inconvenience suffered, not for the use of the gov- 



50 BUCKLE 

eminent, but for the benefit of the people; in other words, 
the industrious classes were robbed in order that industry 
might thrive. 

Such are some of the benefits which European trade owes 
to the paternal care of European legislators. But worse 
still remains behind. For the economical evils, great as they 
were, have been far surpassed by the moral evils which this 
system produced. The first inevitable consequence was that, 
in every part of Europe, there arose numerous and powerful 
gangs of armed smugglers, who lived by disobeying the laws 
which their ignorant rulers had imposed. These men, des- 
perate from the fear of punishment, and accustomed to the 
commission of every crime, contaminated the surrounding 
population; introduced into peaceful villages vices formerly 
unknown ; caused the ruin of entire families ; spread, wherever 
they came, drunkenness, theft, and dissoluteness; and famil- 
iarized their associates with those coarse and swinish de- 
baucheries which were the natural habits of so vagrant and 
lawless a life. The innumerable crimes arising from this 
are directly chargeable upon the European governments by 
whom they were provoke^^J^ The offences were caused by the 
/.n ^aws r ai^ Tiow^tteat ^he^ laws are repealed, the offences have 
disappeared. But it will hardly be pretended that the in- 
terests of civilization have been advanced by such a policy 
as this. It will hardly be pretended that we owe much to a 
system which, having called into existence a new class of 
criminals, at length retraces its steps; and, though it thus 
puts an end to the crime, only destroys what its own act had 
created. )!». 

It is unnecessary to say that these remarks do not affect 
the real services rendered to society by every tolerably or- 
ganized government. In all countries, a power of punish- 
ing crime and of framing laws must reside somewhere; other- 
wise the nation is in a state of anarchy. But the accusation 
which the historian is bound to bring against every govern- 
ment which has hitherto existed is that it has overstepped 
its proper functions, and at each step has done incalculable 
harm. The love of exercising power has been found to be 
so universal that no class of men who have possessed author- 




BUCKLE 51 

ity have been able to avoid abusing it. To maintain order, 
to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, and to adopt 
certain precautions respecting the public health, are the only 
services which any government can render to the interests 
of civilization. That these are services of immense value, 
no one will deny; but it cannot be said that by them civiliza- 
tion is advanced, or the progress of Man accelerated. All 
that is done is to afford the opportunity of progress; the 
progress itself must depend upon other matters. And that 
this is the sound view of legislation is, moreover, evident 
from the fact that as knowledge is becoming more diffused, 
and as an increasing experience is enabling each successive 
generation better to understand the complicated relations of 
life, just in the same proportion are men insisting upon the 
repeal of those protective laws the enactment of which was 
deemed by politicians to be the greatest triumph of political 
foresight. 

Seeing, therefore, that the efforts of government in favor 
of civilization are, when most successful, altogether negative; 
and seeing, too, that when those efforts are more than negative 
they become inj urious, — it clearly follows that all specula- 
tions must be erroneous which ascribe the progress of Europe 
to the wisdom of its rulers. This is an inference which rests 
not only on the arguments already adduced, but on facts 
which might be multiplied from every page of history. For no 
government having recognized its proper limits, the result 
is that every government has inflicted on its subjects great 
injuries; and has done this nearly always with the best in- 
tentions. The effects of its protective policy in injuring trade, 
and, what is far worse, in increasing crime, have just been 
noticed; and to these instances innumerable others might be 
added. Thus, during many centuries, every government 
thought it was its bounden duty to encourage religious truth 
and discourage religious error. The mischief this has pro- 
duced is incalculable. Putting aside all other considerations, 
it is enough to mention its two leading consequences ; which 
are, the increase of hypocrisy, and the increase of perjury. 
The increase of hypocrisy is the inevitable result of connect- 
ing any description of penalty with the profession of par- 



52 BUCKLE 

ticular opinions. Whatever may be the case with individuals, 
it is certain that the maj ority of men find an extreme difficulty 
in long resisting constant temptation. And when the tempta- 
tion comes to them in the shape of honor and emolument, 
they are too often ready to profess the dominant opinions, 
and abandon, not indeed their belief, but the external marks 
by which that belief is made public. Every man who takes 
this step is a hypocrite; and every government which en- 
courages this step to be taken is an abettor of hypocrisy and 
a creator of hypocrites. Well, therefore, may we say that 
when a government holds out as a bait that those who pro- 
fess certain opinions shall enjoy certain privileges, it plays 
the part of the tempter of old, and, like the Evil One, basely 
offers the good things of this world to him who will change 
his worship and deny his faith. At the same time, and as a 
part of this system, the increase of perjury has accompanied 
the increase of hypocrisy. For legislators, plainly seeing 
that proselytes thus obtained could not be relied upon, have 
met the danger by the most extraordinary precautions; and 
compelling men to confirm their belief by repeated oaths, 
have thus sought to protect the old creed against the new 
converts. It is this suspicion as to the motives of others 
which has given rise to oaths of every kind and in every di- 
rection. In England, even the boy at college is forced to 
swear about matters which he cannot understand, and which 
far riper minds are unable to master. If he afterwards goes 
into Parliament, he must again swear about his religion; and 
at nearly every stage of political life he must take fresh 
oaths, the solemnity of which is often strangely contrasted 
with the trivial functions to which they are the prelude. A 
solemn adjuration of the Deity being thus made at every 
turn, it has happened, as might have been expected, that 
oaths, enjoined as a matter of course, have at length degener- 
ated into a matter of form. What is lightly taken is easily 
broken. And the best observers of English society — ob- 
servers, too, whose characters are very different, and who 
hold the most opposite opinions — are all agreed on this, 
that the perjury habitually practiced in England, and of 
which government is the immediate creator, is so general 



BUCKLE 63 

that it has become a source of national corruption, has di- 
minished the value of human testimony, and shaken the con- 
fidence which men naturally place in the word of their fel- 
low-creatures. 

The open vices and, what is much more dangerous, the 
hidden corruption thus generated in the midst of society by 
the ignorant interference of Christian rulers is indeed a 
painful subject; but it is one which I could not omit in an 
analysis of the causes of civilization. It would be easy to 
push the inquiry still further, and to show how legislators, 
in every attempt they have made to protect some particular in- 
terests and uphold some particular principles, have not only 
failed, but have brought about results diametrically opposite 
to those which they proposed. We have seen that their laws [ 
in favor of industry have injured industry; that their laws j 
in favor of religion have increased hypocrisy; and that their 1 
laws to secure truth have encouraged perjury. Exactly in ] 
the same way, nearly every country has taken steps to pre- 
vent usury and keep down the interest of money; and the 
invariable effect has been to increase usury and raise the in- 
terest of money. For since no prohibition, however stringent, 
can destroy the natural relation between demand and supply, 
it has followed that when some men want to borrow, and 
other men want to lend, both parties are sure to find means 
of evading a law which interferes with their mutual rights. 
If the two parties were left to adjust their own bargain un- 
disturbed the usury would depend on the circumstances of the 
loan, such as the amount of security and the chance of re- 
payment. But this natural arrangement has been compli- 
cated by the interference of government. A certain risk 
being always incurred by those who disobey the law, the 
usurer very properly refuses to lend his money unless he is 
also compensated for the danger he is in from the penalty 
hanging over him. This compensation can only be made by 
the borrower, who is thus obliged to pay what in reality 
is a double interest: one interest for the natural risk on the 
loan, and another interest for the extra risk from the law. 
Such, then, is the position in which every European legisla- 
ture has placed itself. By enactments against usury it has 



54 BUCKLE 

increased what it wished to destroy: it has passed laws which 
the imperative necessities of men compel them to violate: 
while^ to wind up the whole^ the penalty for such violation 
falls on the borrowers^ — that is^ on the very class in whose 
favor the legislators interfered. 

In the same meddling spirit, and with the same mistaken 
notions of protection, the great Christian governments have 
done other things still more injurious. They have made 
strenuous and repeated efforts to destroy the liberty of the 
press, and prevent men from expressing their sentiments 
on the most important questions in politics and religion. In 
nearly every country, they, with the aid of the church, have or- 
ganized a vast system of literary police, the sole object of 
which is to abrogate the undoubted right of every citizen to 
lay his opinions before his fellow-citizens. In the very few 
countries where they have stopped short of these extreme 
steps, they have had recourse to others less violent but equally 
unwarrantable. For even where they have not openly for- 
bidden the free dissemination of knowledge, they have done 
all that they could to check it. On all the implements of 
knowledge, and on all the means by which it is diffused, 
such as paper, books, political journals, and the like, they 
have imposed duties so heavy that they could hardly have 
done worse if they had been the sworn advocates of popular 
ignorance. Indeed, looking at what they have actually ac- 
complished, it may be emphatically said that they have taxed 
the human mind. They have made the very thoughts of men 
pay toll. Whoever wishes to communicate his ideas to others, 
and thus do what he can to increase the stock of our acquire- 
ments, must first pour his contributions into the imperial ex- 
chequer. That is the penalty inflicted on him for instruct- 
ing his fellow-creatures. That is the blackmail which gov- 
ernment extorts from literature and on receipt of which it 
accords its favor and agrees to abstain from further demands. 
And what causes all this to be the more insufferable is the 
use which is made of these and similar exactions, wrung from 
every kind of industry, both bodily and mental. It is truly 
a frightful consideration that knowledge is to be hindered, 
and that the proceeds of honest labor, of patient thought. 



BUCKLE 66 

and sometimes oi profound genius are to be diminished_, in 
order that a large part of their scanty earnings may go to 
swell the pomp of an idle and ignorant court, minister to the 
caprice of a few powerful individuals, and too often supply 
them with the means of turning against the people resources 
which the people called into existence. 

These, and the foregoing statements respecting the ef- 
fects produced on European society by political legislation, 
are not doubtful or hypothetical inferences, but are such as 
every reader of history may verify for himself. Indeed, some 
of them are still acting in England; and, in one country or 
another, the whole of them may be seen in full force. When 
put together they compose an aggregate so formidable that we 
may well wonder how, in the face of them, civilization has 
been able to advance. That, under such circumstances, it has 
advanced is a decisive proof of the extraordinary energy of 
Man; and justifies a confident belief that as the pressure of 
legislation is diminished, and the human mind less hampered, 
the progress will contine with accelerated speed. But it is 
absurd, it would be a mockery of all sound reasoning, to 
ascribe to legislation any share in the progress, or to expect 
any benefit from future legislators except that sort of benefit 
which consists in undoing the work of their predecessors. 
This is what the present generation claims at their hands; 
and it should be remembered that what one generation so- 
licits as a boon the next generation demands as a right. And, 
when the right is pertinaciously refused, one of two things 
has always happened: either the nation has retrograded or 
else the people have risen. Should the government remain 
firm, this is the cruel dilemma in which men are placed: if 
they submit, they injure their country; if they rebel, they 
may injure it still more. In the ancient monarchies of the 
East, their usual plan was to yield; in the monarchies of Eu- 
rope, it has been to resist. Hence those insurrections and 
rebellions which occupy so large a space in modern history, 
and which are but repetitions of the old story, the undying 
struggle between oppressors and oppressed. It would, how- 
ever, be unjust to deny that in one country the fatal crisis 
has now for several generations been successfully averted. 



56 BUCKLE 

In one European country, and in one alone, the people have 
been so strong, and the government so weak, that the history 
of legislation, taken as a whole, is, notwithstanding a few 
aberrations, the history of slow but constant concession: re- 
forms which would have been refused to argument have been 
yielded from fear; while, from the steady increase of demo- 
cratic opinions, protection after protection and privilege after 
privilege have, even in our own time, been torn away ; until the 
old institutions, though they retain their former name, have 
lost their former vigor, and there no longer remains a doubt 
as to what their fate must ultimately be. Nor need we add 
that in this same country where, more than in any other of 
Europe, legislators are the exponents and the servants of the 
popular will, the progress has, on this account, been more un- 
deviating than elsewhere; there has been neither anarchy nor 
revolution; and the world has been made familiar with the 
great truth that one main condition of the prosperity of a 
people is that its rulers shall have very little power, that 
they shall exercise that power very sparingly, and that they 
shall by no means presume to raise themselves into supreme 
judges of the national interests, or deem themselves author- 
ized to defeat the wishes of those for whose benefit alone 
they occupy the post intrusted to them. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

(1803-1882) 

POLITICS ^ 

In dealing with the State we ought to remember that its 
institutions are not aboriginal^ though they existed before 
we were born ; that they are not superior to the citizen ; that 
every one of them was once the act of a single man; every 
law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular 
case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make 
as good, we may make better. Society is an illusion to the 
young citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with cer- 
tain names, men and institutions rooted like oak-trees to the 
centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they 
can. But the old statesman knows that society is fluid: there 
are no such roots and centres, but any particle may suddenly 
become the centre of the movement and compel the system 
to gyrate round it; as every man of strong will, like Pisis- 
tratus or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, 
like Plato or Paul, does forever. But politics rest on neces- 
sary foundations, and cannot be treated with levity. Re- 
publics abound in young civilians who believe that the laws 
make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and 
modes of living and employments of the population, that 
commerce, education, and religion, may be voted in or out; and 
that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on 
a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a 
law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope 
of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must 
follow and not lead the character and progress of the citi- 
zen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only 
who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of 

1 First published in 1844. in the volume of "Essays: Second 
Series." 

57 



68 EMERSON 

government which prevails is the expression of what culti- 
vation exists in the population which permits it. The law 
is only a memorandum. We are superstitious^, and esteem the 
statute somewhat: so much life as it has in the character of 
living men is its force. The statute stands there to say, 
Yesterday we agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article 
to-day.^ Our statute is a currency which we stamp with 
our own portrait: it soon becomes unrecognizable, and in 
process of time will return to the mint. Nature is not demo- 
cratic nor limited-monarchical, but despotic, and will not be 
fooled or abated of any jot of her authority by the pertest 
of her sons; and as fast as the public mind is opened to more 
intelligence, the code is seen to be brute and stammering. 
It speaks not articulately, and must be made to. Meantime 
the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries 
of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic 
youth dreams, and prays, and paints to-day, but shuns the 
ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions 
of public bodies ; then shall be carried as grievance and bill 
of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be trium- 
phant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it 
gives place in turn to new prayers and pictures. The history 
of the State sketches in coarse outline the progress of thought, 
and follows at a distance the delicacy of culture and of as- 
piration. 

The theory of politics which has possessed the mind of men, 
and which they have expressed the best they could in their 
laws and in their revolutions, considers persons and property 
as the two objects for whose protection government exists. 
Of persons, all have equal rights, in virtue of being identical 
in nature. This interest of course with its whole power de- 
mands a democracy. Whilst the rights of all as persons are 
equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in 
property are very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and 
another owns a county. This accident, depending primarily 
on the skill and virtue of the parties, of which there is every 
degree, and secondarily on patrimony, falls unequally, and 
its rights of course are unequal. Personal rights, univer- 
sally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio 



EMERSON 69 

of the census; property demands a government framed on 
the ratio of owners and of owning. Laban, who has flocks 
and herds, wishes them looked after by an officer on the 
frontiers, lest the Midianites shall drive them off; and pays 
a tax to that end. Jacob has no flocks or herds and no fear 
of the Midianites, and pays no tax to the officer. It seemed 
fit that Laban and Jacob should have equal rights to elect the 
officer who is to defend their persons, but that Laban and 
not Jacob should elect the officer who is to guard the sheep 
and cattle. And if question arise whether additional officers 
or watch-towers should be provided, must not Laban and Isaac, 
and those who must sell part of their herds to buy protection 
for the rest, judge better of this, and with more right, than 
Jacob, who, because he is a youth and a traveller, eats their 
bread and not his own ? 

In the earliest society the proprietors made their own 
wealth, and so long as it comes to the owners in the direct 
way, no other opinion would arise in any equitable com- 
munity than that property should make the law for property, 
and persons the law for persons. 

But property passes through donation or inheritance to 
those who do not create it. Gift, in one case, makes it as 
really the new owner's, as labor made it the first owner's: 
in the other case, of patrimony, the law makes an ownership 
which will be valid in each man's view according to the estimate 
which he sets on public tranquillity 

It was not however found easy to embody the readily 
admitted principle that property should make law for prop- 
erty, and persons for persons; since persons and property 
mixed themselves in every transaction. At last it seemed 
settled that the rightful distinction was that the proprietors 
should have more elective franchise than non-proprietors, on 
the Spartan principle of " calling that which is just, equal; 
not that which is equal, just." 

That principle no longer looks so self-evident as it appeared 
in former times, partly because doubts have arisen whether 
too much weight had not been allowed in the laws to prop- 
erty, and such a structure given to our usages as allowed 
the rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep them poor; 



60 EMERSON 

but mainly because there is an instinctive sense^ however 
obscure and yet inarticulate, that the whole constitution of 
property, on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence 
on persons deteriorating and degrading; that truly the only 
interest for the consideration of the State is persons; that 
property will always follow persons; that the highest end of 
government is the culture of men; and that if men can be 
educated, the institutions will share their improvement and 
the moral sentiment will write the law of the land. 

If it be not easy to settle the equity of this question, the 
peril is less when we take note of our natural defences. We 
are kept by better guards than the vigilance of such magis- 
trates as we commonly elect. Society always consists in 
greatest part of young and foolish persons. The old, who 
have seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen, die 
and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own 
newspaper, as their fathers did at their age. With such an 
ignorant and deceivable majority. States would soon run to 
ruin, but that there are limitations beyond which the folly and 
ambition of governors cannot go. Things have their laws, 
as well as men; and things refuse to be trifled with. Prop- 
erty will be protected. Corn will not grow unless it is planted 
and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it unless 
the chances are a hundred to one that he will cut and harvest 
it. Under any forms, persons and property must and will 
have their just sway. They exert their power, as steadily 
as matter its attraction. Cover up a pound of earth never so 
cunningly; divide and subdivide it; melt it to liquid, convert 
it to gas; it will always weigh a pound; it will always attract 
and resist other matter by the full virtue of one pound weight: 
— and the attributes of a person, his wit and his moral energy, 
will exercise, under any law or extinguishing tyranny, their 
proper force, — if not overtly, then covertly ; if not for the 
law, then against it; if not wholesomely, then poisonously; 
with right, or by might. 

The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to 
fix, as persons are organs of moral or supernatural force. 
Under the dominion of an idea which possesses the minds of 
multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the 



EMERSON 61 

powers of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A 
nation of men unanimously bent on freedom or conquest can 
easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extrava- 
gant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as the 
Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the 
French have done. 

In like manner to every particle of property belongs its 
own attraction. A cent is the representative of a certain 
quantity of corn or other commodity. Its value is in the 
necessities of the animal man. It is so much warmth, so much 
bread, so much water, so much land. The law may do what 
it will with the owner of property; its just power will still 
attach to the cent. The law may in a mad freak say that 
all shall have power except the owners of property ; they shall 
have no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property 
will, year after year, write every statute that respects prop- 
erty. The non-proprietor will be the scribe of the proprietor. 
What the owners wish to do, the whole power of property will 
do, either through the law or else in defiance of it. Of course 
I speak of all the property, not merely of the great estates. 
When the rich are outvoted, as frequently happens, it is the 
joint treasury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. 
Every man owns something, if it is only a cow, or a wheel- 
barrow, or his arms, and so has that property to dispose of. 

The same necessity which secures the rights of person 
and property against the malignity or folly of the magistrate, 
determines the form and methods of governing, which are 
proper to each nation and to its habit of thought, and no- 
wise transferable to other states of society. In this country 
we are very vain of our political institutions, which are 
singular in this, that they sprung, within the memory of living 
men, from the character and condition of the people, which 
they still express with sufficient fidelity, — and we ostenta- 
tiously prefer them to any other in history. They are not 
better, but only fitter for us. We may be wise in asserting 
the advantage in modern times of the democratic form, but 
to other states of society, in which religion consecrated the 
monarchical, that and not this was expedient. Democracy is 
better for us, because the religious sentiment of the present 



62 EMERSON 

time accords better with it. Born democrats, we are nowise 
qualified to judge of monarchy, which, to our fathers living 
in the monarchical idea, was also relatively right. But our 
institutions, though in coincidence with the spirit of the age, 
have not any exemption from the practical defects which have 
discredited other forms. Every actual State is corrupt. 
Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on 
government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the ^i 
i word politic, which now for ages has signified cunning, in- I 
timating that the State is a trick? ^ 

The same benign necessity and the same practical abuse 
appear in the parties, into which each State divides itself, of 
opponents and defenders of the administration of the gov- 
ernment. Parties are also founded on instincts, and have 
better guides to their own humble aims than the sagacity of 
their leaders. They have nothing perverse in their origin, 
but rudely mark some real and lasting relation. We might 
as wisely reprove the east wind or the frost, as a political 
party, whose members, for the most part, could give no ac- 
count of their position, but stand for the defence of those 
interests in which they find themselves. Our quarrel with 
them begins when they quit this deep natural ground at the 
bidding of some leader, and obeying personal considerations, 
throw themselves into the maintenance and defence of points 
nowise belonging to their system. A party is perpetually 
corrupted by personality. Whilst we absolve the association 
from dishonesty, we cannot extend the same charity to their 
leaders. They reap the rewards of the docility and zeal 
of the masses which they direct. Ordinarily our parties are 
parties of circumstance, and not of principle; as the plant- 
ing interest in conflict with the commercial; the party of 
capitalists and that of operatives: parties which are identical 
in their moral character, and which can easily change ground 
with each other in the support of many of their measures. 
Parties of principle, as, religious sects, or the party of free- 
trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition of slavery, of aboli- 
tion of capital punishment, — degenerate into personalities, or 
would inspire enthusiasm. The vice of our leading parties in 
this country (which may be cited as a fair specimen of these 



EMERSON 63 

societies of opinion) is that they do not plant themselves 
on the deep and necessary grounds to which they are respec- 
tively entitled^ but lash themselves to fury in the carrying 
of some local and momentary measure^ nowise useful to the 
commonwealth. Of the two great parties which at this hourl 
almost share the nation between them, I should say that 
one has the best cause, and the other contains the best 
men. The philosopher, the poet, or the religious man, will 
of course wish to cast his vote with the democrat, for free- 
trade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal cruelties 
in the penal code, and for facilitating in every manner the 
access of the young and the poor to the sources of wealth 
and power. But he can rarely accept the persons whom the 
so-called popular party propose to him as representatives 
of these liberalities. They have not at heart the ends which 
give to the name of democracy what hope and virtue are in 
it. The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and 
aimless: it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends, 
but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. On 
the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most 
moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is 
timid, and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no 
right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it pro- 
poses no generous policy; it does not build, nor write, nor 
cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, 
nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend 
the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant. From neither 
party, when in power, has the world any benefit to expect 
in science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the re- 
sources of the nation. 

I do not for these defects despair of our republic. We 
are not at the mercy of any waves of chance. In the strife 
of ferocious parties, human nature always finds itself cher- 
ished; as the children of the convicts at Botany Bay are 
found to have as healthy a moral sentiment as other children. 
Citizens of feudal states are alarmed at our democratic in- 
stitutions lapsing into anarchy, and the older and more cau- 
tious among ourselves are learning from Europeans to look 
with some terror at our turbulent freedom. It is said that 



64 EMERSON 

in our license of construing the Constitution, and in the 
despotism of public opinion^ we have no anchor; and one 
foreign observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the 
sanctity of Marriage among us; and another thinks he has 
found it in our Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the pop- 
ular security more wisely, when he compared a monarchy and 
a republic, saying that a monarchy is a merchantman, which 
sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock and go to the 
bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, 
but then your feet are always in water. No forms can have 
any dangerous importance whilst we are befriended by the 
laws of things. It makes no difference how many tons 
weight of atmosphere presses on our heads, so long as the 
same pressure resists it within the lungs. Augment the mass 
a thousand fold, it cannot begin to crush us, as long as re- 
action is equal to action. The fact of two poles, of two 
forces, centripetal and centrifugal, is universal, and each 
force by its own activity develops the other. Wild liberty 
develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening 
law and decorum, stupefies conscience. " Lynch-law " pre- 
vails only where there is greater hardihood and self-sub- 
sistency in the leaders. A mob cannot be a permanency; 
everybody's interest requires that it should not exist^ and 
only justice satisfies all. 

We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which 
shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in 
them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or rail- 
roads; and an abstract of the codes of nations would be 
a transcript of the common conscience. Governments have 
their origin in the moral identity of men. Reason for one 
is seen to be reason for another, and for every other. There 
is a middle measure which satisfies all parties, be they 
never so many or so resolute for their own. Every man finds 
a sanction for his simplest claims and deeds, in decisions 
of his own mind, which he calls Truth and Holiness. In 
these decisions all the citizens find a perfect agreement, and 
only in these; not in what is good to eat, good to wear, good 
use of time, or what amount of land or of public aid each 
is entitled to claim. This truth and justice men presently 



EMERSON 65 

endeavor to make application of to the measuring of land, 
the apportionment of service, the protection of life and prop- 
erty. Their first endeavors, no doubt, are very awkward. 
Yet absolute right is the first governor; or, every government 
is an impure theocracy. The idea after which each com- 
munity is aiming to make and mend its law, is the will of 
the wise man. The wise man it cannot find in nature, and 
it makes awkward but earnest efforts to secure his govern- 
ment by contrivance; as by causing the entire people to 
give their voices on every measure; or by a double choice 
to get the representation of the whole; or by a selection of 
the best citizens; or to secure the advantages of efficiency 
and internal peace by confiding the government to one, who 
may himself select his agents. All forms of government 
symbolize an immortal government, common to all dynasties 
and independent of numbers, perfect where two men exist, 
perfect where there is only one man. 

Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of 
the character of his fellows. My right and my wrong is 
their right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for 
me, and abstain from what is unfit, my neighbor and I shall 
often agree in our means, and work together for a time to 
one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not 
sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I 
overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. I \ 
may have so much more skill or strength than he that he 
cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, 
and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature 
cannot maintain the assumption; it must be executed by a 
practical lie, namely by force. This undertaking for another 
is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the gov- 
ernments of the world. It is the same thing in numbers, 
as in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well 
enough a great difference between my setting myself down 
to a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act 
after my views; but when a quarter of the human race as- 
sume to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed 
by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their 
command. Therefore all public ends look vague and quixotic 



66 EMERSON 

beside private ones. For any laws but those which men 
make for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself in the 
place of my child^, and we stand in one thought and see that 
things are thus or thus, that perception is law for him and 
me. We are both there, both act. But if, without carry- 
ing him into the thought, I look over into his plot, and, guess- 
ing how it is with him, ordain this or that, he will never 
obey me. This is the history of governments, — one man does 
something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be 
acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me 
ordains that a part of my labor shall go to this or that 
whimsical end, — not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Be- 
hold the consequence. Of all debts men are least willing to 
pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government ! Every- 
where they think they get their money's worth, except for 
these. 

Hence the less government we have the better, — the fewer 
laws, and the less confided po>ver. The antidote to this abuse 
of formal Government is the influence of private character, 
the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the prin- 
cipal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise 
man; of whom the existing government is, it must be owned, 
but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe; 
which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to 
form and deliver, is character; that is the end of Nature, 
to reach unto this coronation of her king. To educate the 
wise man the State exists, and with the appearance of the 
wise man the State expires. The appearance of character 
makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. 
He needs no army, fort, or navy, — he loves men too well ; 
no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no 
vantage ground, no favorable circumstance. He needs no 
library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is 
a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no 
money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he 
is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through 
him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, 
for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of 
all men unto him needs not husband and educate a few to 



EMERSON 67 

share with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men 
is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his presence, frank- 
incense and flowers. 

We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are 
yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In 
our barbarous society the influence of character is in its in- 
fancy. As a political power, as the rightful lord who is to 
tumble all rulers from their chairs, its presence is hardly yet 
suspected. Malthus and Ricardo quite omit it; the Annual 
Register is silent; in the Conversations' Lexicon it is not set 
down; the President's Message, the Queen's Speech, have not 
mentioned it; and yet it is never nothing. Every thought 
which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the world. 
The gladiators in the lists of power feel, through all their 
frocks of force and simulation, the presence of worth. I think 
the very strife of trade and ambition is confession of this 
divinity ; and successes in those fields are the poor amends, 
the figleaf with which the shamed soul attempts to hide its 
nakedness. I find the like unwilling homage in all quarters. 
It is because we know how much is due from us that we are 
impatient to show some petty talent as a substitute for worth. 
We are haunted by a conscience of this right to grandeur 
of character, and are false to it. But each of us has some 
talent, can do somewhat useful, or graceful, or formidable, 
or amusing, or lucrative. That we do, as an apology to others 
and to ourselves for not reaching the mark of a good and 
equal life. But it^does not satisfy us, whilst we thrust it on 
the notice of our companions. It may throw dust in their 
eyes, but does not smooth our own brow, or give us the 
tranquillity of the strong when we walk abroad. We do 
penance as we go. Our talent is a sort of expiation, and 
we are constrained to reflect on our splendid moment with a 
certain humiliation, as somewhat too fine, and not as one 
act of many acts, a fair expression of our permanent energy. 
Most persons of ability meet in society with a kind of tacit 
appeal. Each seems to say, " I am not all here." Senators 
and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not 
because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an 
apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our 



68 EMERSON 

eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to them- 
selves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. They must 
do what they can. Like one class of forest animals, they 
have nothing but a prehensile tail; climb they must, or crawl. 
If a man found himself so rich-natured that he could enter 
into strict relations with the best persons and make life serene 
around him by the dignity and sweetness of his behavior, 
could he afford to circumvent the favor of the caucus and 
the press, and covet relations so hollow and pompous as those 
of a politician.^ Surely nobody would be a charlatan who 
.could afford to be sincere. 

I The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-gov- 
lernment, and leave the individual, for all code, to the re- 
wards and penalties of his own constitution; which work 
with more energy than we believe whilst we depend on arti- 
ficial restraints. The movement in this direction has been 
very marked in modern history. Much has been blind and 
discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected 
by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force. 
It was never adopted by any party in history, neither can 
be. It separates the individual from all party, and unites 
him at the same time to the race. It promises a recognition 
of higher rights than those of personal freedom, or the secur- 
ity of property. A man has a right to be employed, to be 
trusted, to be loved, to be revered. The power of love, as 
the basis of a State, has never been tried. We must not 
imagine that all things are lapsing into confusion if every 
tender protestant be not compelled to bear his part in certain 
social conventions; nor doubt that roads can be built, letters 
carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government 
of force is at an end. Are our methods now so excellent 
that all competition is hopeless ? could not a nation of friends 
even devise better ways.^ On the other hand, let not the 
most conservative and timid fear anything from a premature 
surrender of the bayonet and the system of force. For, ac- 
cording to the order of nature, which is quite superior to our 
will, it stands thus; there will always be a government of 
force where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough 
to abjure the code of force they will be wise enough to see 



EMERSON 69 

how these public ends of the post-office, of the highway, of 
commerce and the exchange of property, of museums and 
libraries, of institutions of art and science can be answered. 
We live in a very low state of the world, and pay un- 
willing tribute to governments founded on force. There is 
not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most 
religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment 
and a sufficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them 
that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as 
well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might 
be reasonable and a good neighbor, without the hint of a 
jail or a confiscation. What is strange too, there never was 
in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude to in- 
spire him with the broad design of renovating the State on 
the principle of right and love. All those who have pre- 
tended this design have been partial reformers, and have 
admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State. 
I do not call to mind a single human being who has steadily 
denied the authority of the laws, on the simple ground of his 
own moral nature. Such designs, full of genius and full of 
faith as they are, are not entertained except avowedly as air- 
pictures. If the individual who exhibits them dare to think 
them practicable, he disgusts scholars and churchmen; and 
men of talent and women of superior sentiments cannot hide 
their contempt. Not the less does nature continue to fill the 
heart of youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there 
are now men, — if indeed I can speak in the plural number, 
— more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with 
one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make 
it for a moment appear impossible that thousands of human 
beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and 
simplest sentiments, as well as a knot of friends^^ or a pair 
of lovers. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 

(1817-1862) 
ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ^ 

I heartily accept the motto, — " That government is best 
which governs least " ; and I should like to see it acted up 
to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally 
amounts to this, which also I believe, — " That government is 
best which governs not at all " ; and when men are prepared 
for it, that will be the kind of government which they will 
have; Government is at best but an expedient; but most 
governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, 
inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against 
a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve 
to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing 
government. The standing army is only an arm of the stand- 
ing government. The government itself, which is only the 
mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is 
equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people 
can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the 
work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing 
government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would 
not have consented to this measure. 

This American government, — what is it but a tradition, 
though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired 
to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? 
It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for 
a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden 
gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less neces- 
sary for this; for the people must have some complicated 

1 First published in 1849, under the title " Resistance to Civil 
Government." A few pages devoted to Thoreau's prison exper- 
iences, and to comments on and quotations from Daniel Webster, 
are omitted from the present reprint. 

70 



THOREAU 71 

machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea 
of government which they have. Governments show thus 
how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on them- 
selves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must 
all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any 
enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its 
way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle 
the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in 
the American people has done all that has been accomplished ; 
and it would have done somewhat more, if the government 
had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an 
expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one an- 
other alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, 
the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, 
if they were not made of india-rubber, would never manage 
to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually 
putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men 
wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their 
intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with 
those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the rail- 
roads. 

But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those 
who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at 
once no government, but at once a better government. Let 
every man make known what kind of government would com- 
mand his respect, and that will be one step toward obtain- 
ing it. 

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is 
once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, 
and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they 
are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems 
fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the 
strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in 
all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men 
understand it. Can there not be a governmejnt in which 
majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but con- 
science? — in which majorities decide only those questions 
to which the rule of expediency is applicable.^ Must the 
citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his 



72 THOREAU 

conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a con- 
science, then? I think that we should be men first, and sub- 
jects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect 
for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation 
which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what 
I think right. It is truly enough said, that a corporation 
has no conscience ; but a corporation of conscientious men 
is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a 
whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even 
the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. 
A common and natural result of an undue respect for law 
is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, cor- 
poral, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in ad- 
mirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their 
wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which 
makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpita- 
tion of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable 
business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably 
inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small mov- 
able forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous 
man in power? Visit the Navy-yard, and behold a marine, 
such a man as an American government can make, or such 
as it can make a man with its black arts, — a mere shadow 
and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and stand- 
ing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with 
funeral accompaniments, though it may be, — 

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note. 
As his corse to the rampart we hurried; 

Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot 
O'er the grave where our hero we buried. 

The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, 
but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing 
army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. 
In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judg- 
ment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a 
level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can 
perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as 
well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or 



THOREAU 73 

a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as 
horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly 
esteemed good citizens. Others — as most legislators, politi- 
cians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders — serve the State 
chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral 
distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without 
intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, 
reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with 
their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most 
part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A 
wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit 
to be " clay," and " stop a hole to keep the wind away," but 
leave that office to his dust at least : — 

I am too high-born to be propertied, 

To be a secondary at control, 

Or useful serving-man and instrument 

To any sovereign state throughout the world. 

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears 
to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially 
to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist. 

How does it become a man to behave toward this American 
government to-day ? I answer, that he cannot without dis- 
grace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize 
that political organization as my government which is the 
slave's government also. 

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right 
to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when 
its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But 
almost all say that such is not the case now. But such 
was the case, they think, in the Revolution of '75. If one 
were to tell me that this was a bad government because it 
taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is 
most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for 
I can do without them. All machines have their friction; 
and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the 
evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. 
But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppres- 
sion and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such 



74 THOREAU 

a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the 
population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge 
of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly over- 
run and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to mili- 
tary law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to 
rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more 
urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, 
but ours is the invading army. 

Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, 
in his chapter on the " Duty of Submission to Civil Govern- 
ment," resolves all civil obligation into expediency; and he 
proceeds to say, " that so long as the interest of the whole 
society requires it, that is, so long as the established gov- 
ernment cannot be resisted or changed without public incon- 
veniency, it is the will of God that the established govern- 
ment be obeyed, and no longer. . . . This principle being ad- 
mitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is re- 
duced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and 
grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense 
of redressing it on the other." Of this, he says, every man 
shall judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have 
contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does 
not apply, in which a people, as well as an individual, must 
do justice, cost what it may. If I have unjustly wrested 
a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him 
though I drown myself. This, according to Paley, would be 
inconvenient. But he that would save his life, in such a case, 
shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to 
make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a 
people. 

In their practice, nations agree with Paley; but does any 
one think that Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the 
present crisis ? 

A drab of state, a cloth-o'-silver slut, 

To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt. 

Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massa- 
chusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, 
but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who 



THOREAU 75 

are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they 
are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the 
slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with 
far-ofF foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate 
with, and do the bidding of, those far away, and without 
whom the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed to 
say that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement 
is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better 
than the many. It is not so important that many should 
be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness 
somewhere ; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are 
thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the 
war, and who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; 
who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Frank- 
lin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that 
they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even post- 
pone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, 
and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest ad- 
vices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep 
over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man 
and patriot to-day } They hesitate, and they regret, and some- 
times they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with 
effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy 
the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, 
they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and 
God-speed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine 
hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous 
man. But it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a 
thing than with the temporary guardian of it. 

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, 
with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, 
with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. 
The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, 
perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned 
that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the 
majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of 
expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. 
It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should 
prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy 



76 T H O R E A U 

of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the 
majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses 
of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the 
abolition of slavery_, it will be because they are indifferent 
to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be 
abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. 
Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts 
his own freedom by his vote. 

I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, 
for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up 
chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profes- 
sion; but I think, what is it to any independent, intelligent, 
and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall 
we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, never- 
theless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? 
Are there not many individuals in the country who do not at- 
tend conventions ? But no : I find that the respectable man, 
so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and de- 
spairs of his country, when his country has more reason to 
despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates 
thus selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is 
himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His 
vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled for- 
eigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. O for 
a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone 
in his back which you cannot pass your hand through ! Our 
statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too 
large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles 
in this country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any 
inducement for men to settle here? The American has 
dwindled into an Odd Fellow, — one who may be known by 
the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a mani- 
fest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first 
and chief concern, on coming into the world, is to see that 
the Almshouses are in good repair; and, before yet he has 
lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a fund for the 
support of the widows and orphans that may be; who, in 
short, ventures to live only by the aid of the Mutual Insur- 
ance company, which has promised to bury him decently. 



THOREAU 77 

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote him- 
self to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; 
he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; 
hut it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if 
he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his 
support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contempla- 
tions, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them 
sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him 
first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what 
gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my 
townsmen say, " I should like to have them order me out 
to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march 
to Mexico; — see if I would go"; and yet these very men 
have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at 
least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is 
applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those 
who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which 
makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and 
authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the State 
were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it 
while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning 
for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil 
Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and 
support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes 
its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, un- 
moral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have 
made. 

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most 
disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to 
which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble 
are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of 
the character and measures of a government, yield to it their 
allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious 
supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to 
reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, 
to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they 
not dissolve it themselves, — the union between themselves and 
the State, — and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury.^ 
Do not they stand in the same relation to the State that the 



78 THOREAU 

State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons 
prevented the State from resisting the Union which have pre- 
vented them from resisting the State? 

How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely 
and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion 
is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single 
dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with know- 
ing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, 
or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you 
take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and 
see that you are never cheated again. Action from prin- 
ciple, the perception and the performance of right, changes 
things and relations ; it is essentially revolutionary, and does 
not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only 
divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides 
the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine. 

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or 
shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we 
have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men 
generally, under such a government as this, think that they 
ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter 
them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy 
would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the gov- 
ernment itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It 
makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and 
provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wide minor- 
ity? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why 
does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point 
out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why 
does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus 
and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels ? 

One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial 
of its authority was the only offense never contemplated by 
government; else, why has it not assigned its definite, its 
suitable and proportionate penalty? If a man who has no 
property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, 
he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that 
I know, and determined only by the discretion of those who 
placed him there; but if he should steal ninety times nine 



THOREAU 79 

shillings from the State^ he is soon permitted to go at large 
again. 

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the 
machine of government, let it go, let it go : perchance it will 
wear smooth, — certainly the machine will wear out. If the 
injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, 
exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether 
the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such 
a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice 
to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a 
counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is 
to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong 
which I condemn. 

As for adopting the ways which the State has provided 
for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They 
take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have 
other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly 
to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it 
good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but some- 
thing; and because he cannot do everything, it is not neces- 
sary that he should do something wrong. It is not my busi- 
ness to be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any 
more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should 
not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this 
case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is 
the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and un- 
conciliatory ; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and 
consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves 
it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death, which 
convulse the body. 

I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves 
Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their sup- 
port, both in person and property, from the government of 
Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of 
one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. 
I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, 
without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more 
right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already. 
I meet this American government, or its representative, the 



80 THOREAU 

state government, directly, and face to face, once a year — 
no more — in the person of its tax-gatherer ; this is the only 
mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it; 
and it then says distinctly, Recognize me; and the simplest, 
the most effectual, and, in the present posture of aifairs, the 
indispensablest mode of treating with it on this head, of ex- 
pressing your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to 
deny it then. My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very 
man I have to deal with, — for it is, after all, with men and 
not with parchment that I quarrel, — and he has voluntarily 
chosen to be an agent of the government. How shall he ever 
know well what he is and does as an officer of the govern- 
ment, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether 
he shall treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, 
as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and dis- 
turber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction 
to his neighborliness without a ruder and more impetuous 
thought or speech corresponding with his action. I know this 
well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom 
I could name — if ten honest men only — ay, if one honest 
man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, 
were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be 
locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the aboli- 
tion of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the 
beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done for- 
ever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our 
mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its 
service, but not one man. If my esteemed neighbor, the 
State's ambassador, who will devote his days to the settle- 
ment of the question of human rights in the Council Chamber, 
instead of being threatened with the prisons of Carolina, were 
to sit down the prisoner of Massachusetts, that State which is 
so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her sister, — though 
at present she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be 
the ground of a quarrel with her, — the Legislature would not 
wholly waive the subject the following winter. 

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true 
place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place 
to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for 



THOREAU 81 

her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to 
be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as 
they have already put themselves out by their principles. It 
is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner 
on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his 
race, should find them; on that separate, but more free 
and honorable ground, where the State places those who are 
not with her, but against her, — the only house in a slave State 
in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think 
that their influence would be lost there, and their voices 
no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be 
as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much 
truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently 
and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced 
a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip 
of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is 
powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even 
a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole 
weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, 
or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which 
to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills 
this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as 
it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit 
violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the defini- 
tion of a peaceful revolution, if any such is possible. If the 
tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has 
done, " But what shall I do? " my answer is, " If you really 
wish to do anything, resign your office." \^Tien the subject 
has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, 
then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood 
should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the 
conscience is wounded.^ Through this wound a man's real 
manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an ever- 
lasting death. I see this blood flowing now. 

I have contemplated the imprisonment of the off'ender, 
rather than the seizure of his goods, — though both will serve 
the same purpose, — because they who assert the purest right, 
and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, 
commonly have not spent much time in accumulating prop- 



82 THOREAU 

erty. To such the State renders comparatively small service, 
and a slight tax is wont to appear exorbitant^ particularly if 
they are obliged to earn it by special labor with their hands. 
If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, 
the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But 
the rich man — not to make any invidious comparison — is 
always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Abso- 
lutely speaking, the more money the less virtue; for money 
comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for 
him ; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. It puts 
to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to 
answer; while the only new question which it puts is the 
hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral 
ground is taken from under his feet. The opportunities of 
living are diminished in proportion as what are called the 
** means " are increased. The best thing a man can do for his 
culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those 
schemes which he entertained when he was poor. Christ an- 
swered the Herodians according to their condition. " Show 
me the tribute-money," said he; — and one took a penny out 
of his pocket; — if you use money which has the image of 
Caesar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, 
that is, if you are men of the State, and gladly enjoy the ad- 
vantages of Caesar's government, then pay him back some of 
his own when he demands it. " Render therefore to Caesar 
that which is Caesar's, and to God those things which are 
God's," — leaving them no wiser than before as to which 
was which; for they did not wish to know. 

When I converse with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive 
that, whatever they may say about the magnitude and serious- 
ness of the question, and their regard for the public tran- 
quillity, the long and the short of the matter is, that they 
cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and 
they dread the consequences to their property and families 
of disobedience to it. For my own part, I should not like 
to think that I ever rely on the protection of the State. But, 
if I deny the authority of the State when it presents its tax- 
bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass 
me and mv children without end. This is hard. This makes 



THOREAU 83 

it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same 
time comfortably, in outward respects. It will not be worth 
the while to accumulate property ; that would be sure to go 
again. You must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a 
small crop, and eat that soon. You must live within yourself, 
and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for 
a start, and not have many affairs. A man may grow rich in 
Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject 
of the Turkish government. Confucius said: " If a state 
is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery 
are subjects of shame; if a state is not governed by the prin- 
ciples of reason, riches and honors are the subjects of shame." 
No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be ex- 
tended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty 
is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an 
estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse 
allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and 
life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of 
disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel 
as if I were worth less in that case. 

Some years ago the State met me in behalf of the Church, 
and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support 
of a clerg^^man whose preaching my father attended, but 
never I myself. " Pay," it said, " or be locked up in the jail." 
I declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another man saw fit 
to pay it. I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed 
to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster; 
for I was not the State's schoolmaster, but I supported my- 
self by voluntary subscriptions. I did not see why the lyceum 
should not present its tax-bill, and have the State to back 
its demand, as well as the Church. However, at the re- 
quest of the selectmen, I condescended to make some such 
statement as this in writing: — "Know all men by these 
presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded 
as a member of any incorporated society which I have not 
joined." This I gave to the town clerk; and he has it. The 
State, having thus learned that I did not wish to be re- 
garded as a member of that church, has never made a like de- 
mand on me since; though it said that it must adhere to its 



84 THOREAU 

original presumption that time. If I had known how to name 
them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the so- 
cieties which I never signed on to ; but I did not know where 
to find a complete list. 

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail 
once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood con- 
sidering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, 
the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating 
which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the 
foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were 
mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered 
that it should have concluded at length that this was the best 
use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of 
my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of 
stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more 
difficult one to climb or break through before they could get 
to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel con- 
fined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. 
I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. 
They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like 
persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every 
compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my 
chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I 
could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the 
door on my meditations, which followed them out again 
without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was 
dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to 
punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some 
person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. 
I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a 
lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know 
its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining re- 
spect for it, and pitied it. 

Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, 
intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is 
not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior 
physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will 
breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strong- 
est. What force has a multitude.^ They only can force me 



THOREAU 85 

who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become 
like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to live 
this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were 
that to live } When I meet a government which says to me, 
" Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give 
it my money? It may be in a great strait, and not know 
what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; do as I 
do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not 
responsible for the successful working of the machinery of 
society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, 
when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does 
not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey 
their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best 
they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the 
other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; 
and so a man. 

I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I ami 
as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad 
subject; and as for supporting schools, I am doing my part 
to educate my fellow-countrymen now. It is for no par- 
ticular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply 
wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand 
aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course 
of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man or a musket to 
shoot one with, — the dollar is innocent, but I am con- 
cerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I 
quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though 
I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I 
can, as is usual in such cases. 

If others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a 
sympathy with the State, they do but what they have already 
done in their own case, or rather they abet injustice to a 
greater extent than the State requires. If they pay the tax 
from a mistaken interest in the individual taxed, to save his 
property, or prevent his going to jail, it is because they have 
not considered wisely how far they let their private feelings 
interfere with the public good. 

This, then, is my position at present. But one cannot be 



86 THOREAU 

too much on his guard in such a case, lest his action be biased 
by obstinacy or an undue regard for the opinions of men. 
Let him see that he does only what belongs to himself and 
to the hour. 

I think sometimes. Why, this people mean well, they are 
only ignorant; they would do better if they knew how: why 
give your neighbors this pain to treat you as they are not 
inclined to? But I think again. This is no reason why I 
should do as they do, or permit others to suffer much greater 
pain of a different kind. Again, I sometimes say to my- 
self. When many millions of men, without heat, without ill- 
will, without personal feeling of any kind, demand of you 
a few shillings only, without possibility, such is their con- 
stitution, of retracing or altering their present demand, and 
without the possibility, on your side, of appeal to any other 
millions, why expose yourself to this overwhelming brute 
force .^ You do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the 
waves, thus obstinately; you quietly submit to a thousand 
similar necessities. You do not put your head into the fire. 
But just in proportion as I regard this as not wholly a brute 
force, but partly a human force, and consider that I have 
relations to those millions as to so many millions of men, and 
not of mere brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal is 
possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the Maker 
of them, and, secondly, from them to themselves. But if I 
put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to 
fire or to the Maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame. 
If I could convince myself that I have any right to be satis- 
fied with men as they are, and to treat them accordingly, 
and not according, in some respects, to my requisitions and 
expectations of what they and I ought to be, then, like a 
good Mussulman and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satis- 
fied with things as they are, and say it is the will of God. 
And, above all, there is this difference between resisting this 
and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this 
with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to change 
the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts. 

I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do 
not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set my- 



THOREAU 87 

self up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may 
say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. 
I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I have 
reason to suspect myself on this head ; and each year, as the 
tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review 
the acts and position of the general and State governments, 
and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for con- 
formity. 

"We must affect our country as our parents. 

And if at any time we alienate 

Our love or industry from doing it honor, 

We must respect effects and teach the soul 

Matter of conscience and religion, 

And not desire of rule or benefit. 

I believe that the State will soon be able to take all my work 
of this sort out of my hands, and then I shall be no better 
a patriot than my fellow-countrymen. Seen from a lower 
point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very 
good; the law and the courts are very respectable; even this 
State and this American government are, in many respects, 
very admirable, and rare things, to be thankful for, such as 
a great many have described them; but seen from a point 
of view a little higher, they are what I have described them; 
seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what 
they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at 
all? 

However, the government does not concern me much, and 
I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is 
n.:t many moments that I live under a government, even in 
L.'lS world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagina- 
tion-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing 
to be to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally inter- 
rupt him. 

I know that most men think differently from myself; but 
those whose lives are by profession devoted to the study of 
these or kindred subjects content me as little as any. States- 
men and legislators, standing so completely within the in- 
stitution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak 



8S THOREAU 

of moving society, but have no resting-place without it. 
They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, 
and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful sys- 
tems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit 
and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They 
are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy 
and expediency. . . . The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but 
consistency or a consistent expediency. Truth is always in 
harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal 
the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. . . . 

They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have 
traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by 
the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with 
reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes 
trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once 
more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain- 
head. . . . For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I 
have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; 
yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical 
talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on 
the science of legislation.^ 

The authority of government, even such as I am willing 
to submit to, — for I will cheerfully obey those who know 
and can do better than I, and in many things even those 
who neither know nor can do so well, — is still an impure 
one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and con- 
sent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my 
person and property but what I concede to it. The progress 
from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited mon- 
archy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect 
for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise 
enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. 
Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement 
possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step 
further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of 
man? There will never be a really free and enlightened 
State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a 
higher and independent power, from which all its own power 
and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I 



THOREAU 89 

please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford 
to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect 
as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent 
with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not 
meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the 
duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore 
this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it 
ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and 
glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet any- 
where seen. 



HERBERT SPENCER 

(1820-1903) 

THE RIGHT TO IGNORE THE STATE ^ 

1. As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions 
must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom^ we cannot 
choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition 
of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all 
that he wills^ provided he infringes not the equal freedom of 
any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the 
State, — to relinquish its protection and to refuse paying to- 
ward its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he 
in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his posi- 
tion is a passive one, and whilst passive he cannot become an 
aggressor. It is equally self-evident that he cannot be com- 
pelled to continue one of a political corporation without a 
breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves pay- 
ment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property 
against his will is an infringement of his rights. Govern- 
ment being simply an agent employed in common by a num- 
ber of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the 
very nature of the connection implies that it is for each 
to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If any 
one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety con- 
federation, nothing can be said except that he loses all claim 
to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of 

1 From the first edition of " Social Statics," published in London 
in 1850. When, after ten years, the first small edition was ex- 
hausted, the book was allowed to go out of print in England; but 
for some twenty-five years thereafter Spencer's publishers con- 
tinued to supply the English market by importing editions in sheets 
printed from the plates of Messrs. Appletons' American reprint. 
In 1892 Spencer published in both England and America a volume 
of excerpts from " Social Statics," in which the chapter here given, 
along with about half the remaining contents of the original work, 
did not appear. 

90 



SPENCER 91 

maltreatment, — a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he 
likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination with- 
out a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw 
from it without committing any such breach; and he has 
therefore a right so to withdraw. 

2. " No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the 
law of nature; and such of them as are valid derive all their 
force and all their authority mediately or immediately from 
this original." Thus writes Blackstone, to whom let all 
honor be given for having so far outseen the ideas of his 
time, — and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good anti- 
dote, this, for those political superstitions which so widely pre- 
vail. A good check upon that sentiment of power-worship 
which still misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of 
constitutional governments as it once did those of monarchs. 
Let men learn that a legislature is not " our God upon earth," 
though, by the authority they ascribe to it and the things they 
expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them 
learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely tempo- 
rary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best 
borrowed. 

Nay, indeed, have we not seen that government is essen- 
tially immoral? Is it not the offspring of evil, bearing 
about it all the marks of its parentage.^ Does it not exist 
because crime exists ? Is it not strong, or, as we say, des- 
potic, when crime is great .^ Is there not more liberty — 
that is, less government — as crime diminishes .^ And must 
not government cease when crime ceases, for very lack of ob- 
jects on which to perform its functions.^ Not only does 
magisterial power exist because of evil, but it exists by 
evil. Violence is employed to maintain it; and all violence 
involves criminality. Soldiers, policemen, and jailers; swords, 
batons, and fetters, — are instruments for inflicting pain; and 
all infliction of pain is in the abstract wrong. The State 
employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike con- 
taminated by the objects with which it deals and the means 
by which it works. Morality cannot recognize it; for mo- 
rality, being simply a statement of the perfect law, can give 
no countenance to anything growing out of, and living by, 



92 SPENCER 

breaches of that law. Wherefore legislative authority can 
never be ethical — must always be conventional merely. 

Hence there is a certain inconsistency in the attempt to 
determine the right position^ structure_, and conduct of a 
government by appeal to the first principles of rectitude. 
For^ as just pointed out^ the acts of an institution which is in 
both nature and origin imperfect cannot be made to square 
with the perfect law. All that we can do is to ascertain, 
firstly^ in what attitude a legislature must stand to the com- 
munity to avoid being by its mere existence an embodied 
wrong; secondly, in what manner it must be constituted so 
as to exhibit the least incongruity with the moral law; and, 
thirdly, to what sphere its actions must be limited to pre- 
vent it from multiplying those breaches of equity it is set up to 
prevent. 

The first condition to be conformed to before a legislature 
can be established without violating the law of equal free- 
dom is the acknowledgement of the right now under discus- 
sion — the right to ignore the State. 

3. Upholders of pure despotism may fitly believe State- 
control to be unlimited and unconditional. They who assert 
that men are made for governments and not governments 
for men may consistently hold that no one can remove him- 
self beyond the pale of political organization. But they who 
maintain that the people are the only legitimate source of 
power — that legislative authority is not original, but de- 
puted — cannot deny the right to ignore the State without 
entangling themselves in an absurdity. 

For, if legislative authority is deputed, it follows that those 
from whom it proceeds are the masters of those on whom it is 
conferred: it follows further that as masters they confer the 
said authority voluntarily: and this implies that they may 
give or withhold it as they please. To call that deputed 
which is wrenched from men whether they will or not is non- 
sense. But what is here true of all collectively is equally 
true of each separately. As a government can rightly act 
for the people only when empowered by them, so also can it 
rightly act for the individual only when empowered by him. 
If A, B, and C debate whether they shall employ an agent to 



SPENCER 93 

perforin for them a certain service, and if, whilst A and B 
agree to do so, C dissents, C cannot equitably be made a party 
to the agreement in spite of himself. And this must be equally 
true of thirty as of three: and if of thirty why not of three 
hundred, or three thousand, or three millions ? 

4. Of the political superstitions lately alluded to, none is 
so universally diffused as the notion that majorities are om- 
nipotent. Under the impression that the preservation of or- 
der will ever require power to be wielded by some party, the 
moral sense of our time feels that such power cannot rightly 
be conferred on any but the largest moiety of society. It 
interprets literally the saying that " the voice of the people 
is the voice of God," and, transferring to the one the sacred- 
ness attached to the other, it concludes that from the will 
of the people — that is, of the majority — there can be no 
appeal. Yet is this belief entirely erroneous. 

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that, struck by some Mal- 
thusian panic, a legislature duly representing public opinion 
were to enact that all children born during the next ten years 
should be drowned. Does any one think such an enactment 
would be warrantable? If not, there is evidently a limit to 
the power of a majority. Suppose, again, that of two races 
living together — Celts and Saxons, for example — the most 
numerous determined to make the others their slaves. Would 
the authority of the greatest number be in such case valid .^ 
If not, there is something to which its authority must be sub- 
ordinate. Suppose, once more, that all men having incomes 
under £50 a year were to resolve upon reducing every income 
above that amount to their own standard, and appropriating 
the excess for public purposes. Could their resolution be 
justified? If not, it must be a third time confessed that 
there is a law to which the popular voice must defer. What, 
then, is that law, if not the law of pure equity — the law 
of equal freedom? These restraints, which all would put to 
the will of the majority, are exactly the restraints set up by 
that law. We deny the right of a majority to murder, to 
enslave, or to rob, simply because murder, enslaving, and 
robbery are violations of that law — violations too gross to 
be overlooked. But if great violations of it are wrong, so 



94 SPENCER 

also are smaller ones. If the will of the many cannot super- 
sede the first principle of morality in these cases^ neither can 
it in any. So that, however insignificant the minority, and 
however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, 
no such trespass is permissible. 

When we have made our constitution purely democratic, 
thinks to himself the earnest reformer, we shall have brought 
government into harmony with absolute justice. Such a faith, 
though perhaps needful for the age, is a very erroneous one. 
By no process can coercion be made equitable. The freest 
form of government is only the least objectionable form. 
The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule 
of the few by the many is tyranny also, only of a less in- 
tense kind. " You shall do as vre will, and not as you will," 
is in either case the declaration; and if the hundred make 
it to the ninety-nine, instead of the ninety-nine to the hun- 
dred, it is only a fraction less immoral. Of two such par- 
ties, whichever fulfills this declaration necessarily breaks the 
law of equal freedom: the only difference being that by the 
one it is broken in the persons of ninety-nine, whilst by the 
other it is broken in the persons of a hundred. And the 
merit of the democratic form of government consists solely in 
this, that it trespasses against the smaller number. 

The very existence of majorities and minorities is indica- 
tive of an immoral state. The man whose character har- 
monizes with the moral law, we found to be one who can 
obtain complete happiness without diminishing the happiness 
of his fellows. But the enactment of public arrangements 
by vote implies a society consisting of men otherwise con- 
stituted — implies that the desires of some cannot be satis- 
fied without sacrificing the desires of others — implies that 
in the pursuit of their happiness the majority inflict a cer- 
tain amount of wwhappiness on the minority — implies, there- 
fore, organic immorality. Thus, from another point of view, 
we again perceive that even in its most equitable form it is 
impossible for government to dissociate itself from evil ; and 
further, that unless the right to ignore the Stat'i is recognized, 
its acts must be essentially criminal. 

5. That a man is free to abandon the benefits and throw 



SPENCER 96 

off the burdens of citizenship, may indeed be inferred from the 
admissions of existing authorities and of current opinion. 
Unprepared as they probably are for so extreme a doctrine as 
the one here maintained, the radicals of our day yet un- 
wittingly profess their belief in a maxim which obviously em- 
bodies this doctrine. Do we not continually hear them quote 
Blackstone's assertion that " no subject of England can be 
constrained to pay any aids or taxes even for the defense 
of the realm or the support of government, but such as are 
imposed by his own consent, or that of his representatives in 
parliament"? And what does this mean? It means, say 
they, that every man should have a vote. True: but it means 
much more. If there is any sense in words, it is a distinct 
enunciation of the very right now contended for. In affirm- 
ing that a man may not be taxed unless he has directly or in- 
directly given his consent, it affirms that he may refuse to be 
so taxed; and to refuse to be taxed is to cut all connection 
with the State. Perhaps it will be said that this consent is 
not a specific, but a general one, and that the citizen is un- 
derstood to have assented to everything his representative 
may do, when he voted for him. But suppose he did not vote 
for him; and on the contrary did all in his power to get 
elected some one holding opposite views — what then ? The 
reply will probably be that, by taking part in such an elec- 
tion, he tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority. 
And how if he did not vote at all? Why then he cannot 
justly complain of any tax, seeing that he made no protest 
against its imposition. So, curiously enough, it seems that 
he gave his consent in whatever way he acted — whether 
he said yes, whether he said no, or whether he remained 
neuter ! A rather awkward doctrine, this. Here stands an 
unfortunate citizen who is asked if he will pay money for a 
certain proffered advantage; and whether he employs the 
only means of expressing his refusal or does not employ it, 
we are told that he practically agrees, if only the number of 
others who agree is greater than the number of those who' 
dissent. And thus we are introduced to the novel principle 
that A's consent to a thing is not determined by 'wb.gt.t A says, 
but by what B may happen to say! 



96 SPENCER 

It is for those who quote Blackstone to choose between this 
absurdity and the doctrine above set forth. Either his maxim 
implies the right to ignore the State, or it is sheer nonsense. 

6. There is a strange heterogeneity in our political faiths. 
Systems that have had their day, and are beginning here and 
there to let the daylight through, are patched with modern 
notions utterly unlike in quality and color; and men gravely 
display these systems, wear them, and walk about in them, 
quite unconscious of their grotesqueness. This transition 
state of ours, partaking as it does equally of the past and the 
future, breeds hybrid theories exhibiting the oddest union of 
bygone despotism and coming freedom. Here are types of the 
old organization curiously disguised by germs of the new — 
peculiarities showing adaptation to a preceding state modi- 
fied by rudiments that prophesy of something to come — 
making altogether so chaotic a mixture of relationships that 
there is no saying to what class these births of the age should 
be referred. 

As ideas must of necessity bear the stamp of the time, it is 
useless to lament the contentment with which these incon- 
gruous beliefs are held. Otherwise it would seem unfortunate 
that men do not pursue to the end the trains of reasoning 
which have led to these partial modifications. In the present 
case, for example, consistency would force them to admit 
that, on other points besides the one just noticed, they hold 
opinions and use arguments in which the right to ignore the 
State is involved. 

For what is the meaning of Dissent? The time was when 
a man's faith and his mode of worship were as much de- 
terminable by law as his secular acts; and, according to pro- 
visions extant in our statute-book, are so still. Thanks to 
the growth of a Protestant spirit, however, we have ignored 
the State in this matter — wholly in theory, and partly in 
practice. But how have we done so? By assuming an atti- 
tude which, if consistently maintained, implies a right to ig- 
nore the State entirely. Observe the positions of the two 
parties. "This is your creed," says the legislator; "you 
must believe and openly profess what is here set down for 
you." " I shall not do anything of the kind," answers the 



SPENCER 07 

nonconformist ; " I will go to prison rather." *' Your re- 
ligious ordinances/' pursues the legislator, " shall be such as 
we have prescribed. You shall attend the churches we have 
endowed, and adopt the ceremonies used in them." " Noth- 
ing shall induce me to do so/' is the reply; " I altogether 
deny your power to dictate to me in such matters, and mean 
to resist to the uttermost." " Lastly," adds the legislator, 
" we shall require you to pay such sums of money toward the 
support of these religious institutions as we may see fit to 
ask." " Not a farthing will you have from me," exclaims our 
sturdy Independent: " even did I believe in the doctrines of 
your church (which I do not), I should still rebel against 
your interference; and if you take my property it shall be 
by force and under protest." 

What now does this proceeding amount to when regarded in 
the abstract.^ It amounts to an assertion by the individual of 
the right to exercise one of his faculties — the religious sen- 
timent — without let or hindrance, and with no limit save 
that set up by the equal claims of others. And what is meant 
by ignoring the State? Simply an assertion of the right 
similarly to exercise all the faculties. The one is just an ex- 
pansion of the other — rests on the same footing with the 
other — must stand or fall with the other. Men do indeed 
speak of civil and religious liberty as different things : but 
the distinction is quite arbitrary. They are parts of the same 
whole, and cannot philosophically be separated. 

" Yes they can," interposes an objector; " assertion of the 
one is imperative as being a religious duty. The liberty to 
worship God in the way that seems to him right is a liberty 
without which a man cannot fulfill what he believes to be 
Divine commands, and therefore conscience requires him to 
maintain it." True enough; but how if the same can be as- 
serted of all other liberty.^ How if maintenance of this also 
turns out to be a matter of conscience? Have we not seen 
that human happiness is the Divine will — that only by ex- 
ercising our faculties is this happiness obtainable — and that 
it is impossible to exercise them without freedom? And if 
this freedom for the exercise of faculties is a condition with- 
out which the Divine will cannot be fulfilled, the preservation 



98 SPENCER 

of it is, by our objector's own showing, a duty. Or, in other 
words, it appears not only that the maintenance of liberty of 
action may be a point of conscience, but that it ought to be 
one. And thus we are clearly shown that the claims to ig- 
nore the State in religious and in secular matters are in es- 
sence identical. 

The other reason commonly assigned for nonconformity 
admits of similar treatment. Besides resisting State dicta- 
tion in the abstract, the dissenter resists it from disapproba- 
tion of the doctrines taught. No legislative injunction will 
make him adopt what he considers an erroneous belief; and, 
bearing in mind his duty toward his fellow-men, he refuses 
to help through the medium of his purse in disseminating this 
erroneous belief. The position is perfectly intelligible. But 
it is one which either commits its adherents to civil noncon- 
formity also, or leaves them in a dilemma. For why do they 
refuse to be instrumental in spreading error? Because er- 
ror is adverse to human happiness. And on what ground is 
any piece of secular legislation disapproved? For the same 
reason — because thought adverse to human happiness. How 
then can it be shown that the State ought to be resisted in the 
one case and not in the other? Will any one deliberately as- 
sert that if a government demands money from us to aid in 
teaching what we think will produce evil, we ought to refuse 
it, but that if the money is for the purpose of doing what we 
think will produce evil, we ought not to refuse it? Yet such 
is the hopeful proposition which those have to maintain who 
recognize the right to ignore the State in religious matters, 
but deny it in civil matters. 

7. The substance of this chapter once more reminds us of 
the incongruity between a perfect law and an imperfect state. 
The practicability of the principle here laid down varies di- 
rectly as social morality. In a thoroughly vicious community 
its admission would be productive of anarchy. In a com- 
pletely virtuous one its admission will be both innocuous and 
inevitable. Progress toward a condition of social health — 
a condition, that is, in which the remedial measures of legis- 
lation will no longer be needed — is progress toward a con- 
dition in which those remedial measures will be cast aside, and 



SPENCER 99 

the authority prescribing them disregarded. The two changes 
are of necessity coordinate. That moral sense whose supre- 
macy will make society harmonious and government unneces- 
sary is the same moral sense which will then make each man 
assert his freedom even to the extent of ignoring the State — 
is the same moral sense which, by deterring the majority from 
coercing the minority, will eventually render government im- 
possible. And as what are merely different manifestations 
of the same sentiment must bear a constant ratio to each other, 
the tendency to repudiate governments will increase only at 
the same rate that governments become needless. 

Let not any be alarmed, therefore, at the promulgation of 
the foregoing doctrine. There are many changes yet to be 
passed through before it can begin to exercise much influence. 
Probably a long time will elapse before the right to ignore 
the State will be generally admitted, even in theory. It 
will be still longer before it receives legislative recognition. 
And even then there will be plenty of checks upon the pre- 
mature exercise of it. A sharp experience will sufficiently 
instruct those who may too soon abandon legal protection. 
Whilst, in the majority of men, there is such a love of tried 
arrangements, and so great a dread of experiments, that they 
will probably not act upon this right until long after it is 
safe to do so. 



LEO TOLSTOY 

(1828-1910) 
APPEAL TO SOCIAL REFORMERS ^ 

In my " Appeal to the Working People " I expressed the 
opinion that if the working-men are to free themselves from 
oppression it is necessary that they should themselves cease 
to live as they now live, struggling with their neighbors for 
their personal welfare, and that, according to the Gospel 
rule, man should " act towards others as he desires that others 
should act towards himself." 

The method I had suggested called forth, as I expected, 
one and the same condemnation from people of the most 
opposite views. 

" It is an Utopia, unpractical. To wait for the liberation 
of men who are suffering from oppression and violence until 
they all become virtuous would mean — whilst recognising 
the existing evil — to doom oneself to inaction." 

Therefore I would like to say a few words as to why I 
believe this idea is not so unpractical as it appears, but, on 
the contrary, deserves that more attention be directed to it 
than to all the other methods proposed by scientific men for 
the improvement of the social order. I would like to say 
these words to those who sincerely — not in words, but in 
deeds — desire to serve their neighbors. It is to such peo- 
ple that I now address myself. 



The ideals of social life which direct the activity of men 
change, and together with them the order of human life also 

1 From a volume of Tolstoy's miscellaneous writings edited by 
Helen Chrouschoff Matheson and entitled " Social Evils and their 
Remedy" (London: Methuen & Co.). It is stated therein that 
" the translation is that used by the Russian Free Press." 

100 



TOLSTOY 101 

changes. There was a time when the ideal of social life was 
complete animal freedom^ according to which one portion of 
mankind, as far as they were able, devoured the other, both 
in the direct and in the figurative sense. Then followed a 
time when the social ideal became the power of one man, and 
men deified their rulers, and not only willingly but enthusi- 
astically submitted to them — Egypt, Rome: " Morituri te 
salutant." Next, people recognised as their ideal an organi- 
sation of life in which power was recognised, not for its own 
sake, but for the good organisation of men's lives. Attempts 
for the realisation of such an ideal were at one time a uni- 
versal monarchy, then a universal Church uniting various 
States and directing them ; then came forth the ideal of repre- 
sentation, then of a Republic, with or without universal suf- 
frage. At the present time it is regarded that this ideal 
can be realised through an economic organisation wherein 
all the instruments of labor will cease to be private prop- 
erty, and will become the property of the whole nation. 

However different be all these ideals, yet, to introduce them 
into life, power was always postulated — that is, coercive 
power, which forces men to obey established laws. The same 
is also postulated now. 

It is supposed that the realisation of the greatest welfare 
for all is attained by certain people (according to the Chinese 
teaching, the most virtuous ; according to the European teach- 
ing, the anointed, or elected by the people) who, being en- 
trusted with power, will establish and support the organisa- 
tion which will secure the greatest possible safety of the 
citizens against mutual encroachments on each other's labor 
and on freedom of life. Not only those who recognise the 
existing State organisation as a necessary condition of hu- 
man life, but also revolutionists and Socialists, though they 
regard the existing State organisation as subject to altera- 
tion, nevertheless recognise power, that is, the right and pos- 
sibility of some to compel others to obey established laws, 
as the necessary condition of social order. 

Thus it has been from ancient times, and still continues 
to be. But those who were compelled by force to submit to 
certain regulations did not always regard these regulations 



102 TOLSTOY 

as the best, and therefore often revolted against those in 
power, deposed them, and in place of the old order established 
a new one, which, according to their opinion, better ensured 
the welfare of the people. Yet as those possessed of power 
always became depraved by this possession, and therefore used 
their power not so much for the common welfare as for their 
own personal interests, the new power has always been similar 
to the old one, and often still more unjust. 

Thus it has been when those who had revolted against ex- 
isting authority overcame it. On the other hand, when vic- 
tory remained on the side of the existing power, then the 
latter, triumphant in self-protection, always increased the 
means of its defence, and became yet more injurious to the 
liberty of its citizens. 

Thus it has always been, both in the past and the present, 
and there is special instructiveness in the way this has taken 
place in our European world during the whole of the 19th 
century. In the first half of this century, revolutions had 
been for the most part successful; but the new authorities 
who replaced the old ones. Napoleon L, Charles X., Napo- 
leon III., did not increase the liberty of the citizens. In 
the second half, after the year 1848, all attempts at revo- 
lution were suppressed by the Governments; and owing to 
former revolutions and attempted new ones, the Governments 
entrenched themselves in greater and greater self-defence, and 
— thanks to the technical inventions of the last century, 
which have furnished men with hitherto unknown powers 
over nature and over each other — they have increased their 
authority, and towards the end of last century have devel- 
oped it to such a degree that it has become impossible for 
the people to struggle against it. The Governments have 
not only seized enormous riches collected from the people, 
have not only disciplined artfully levied troops, but have also 
grasped all the spiritual means of influencing the masses, the 
direction of the Press and of religious development, and, 
above all, of education. These means have been so organized, 
and have become so powerful, that since the year 1848 there 
has been no successful attempt at revolution in Europe. 



TOLSTOY 103 



II 



This phenomenon is quite new and is absolutely peculiar 
to our time. However powerful were Nero, Khengiz-Khan, 
or Charles the Great, they could not suppress risings on 
the borders of their domains, and still less could they direct 
the spiritual activity of their subjects, their education, scien- 
tific and moral, and their religious tendencies; whereas now 
all these means are in the hands of the Governments. 

It is not only the Parisian " macadam " which, having re- 
placed the previous stone roadways, renders barricades im- 
possible during revolutions in Paris, but the same kind of 
"macadam" during the latter half of the 19th century has 
appeared in all the branches of State government. The se- 
cret police, the system of spies, bribery of the Press, rail- 
ways, telegraphs, telephones, photography, prisons, fortifica- 
tions, enormous riches, the education of the younger genera- 
tions, and above all, the army, are in the hands of the Gov- 
ernments. 

All is organised in such a way that the most incapable and 
unintelligent rulers (from the instinctive feeling of self-pres- 
ervation) can prevent serious preparations for a rising, and 
can always, without any effort, suppress those weak attempts 
at open revolt which from time to time are still undertaken 
by belated revolutionists who, by these attempts, only in- 
crease the power of Governments. At present the only means 
for overcoming Governments lies in this: that the army, com- 
posed of the people, having recognised the injustice, cruelty, 
and injury of the Government towards themselves, should 
cease to support it. But in this respect also, the Govern- 
ments, knowing that their chief power is in the army, have so 
organised its mobilisation and its discipline that no propa- 
ganda amongst the people can snatch the army out of the 
hands of the Government. No man, whatever his political 
convictions, who is serving in the army, and has been sub- 
jected to that hypnotic breaking-in which is called discipline, 
can, whilst in the ranks, avoid obeying commands, just as 
an eye cannot avoid winking when a blow is aimed at it. 



104 TOLSTOY 

Boys of the age of twenty, who are enlisted and educated 
in the false ecclesiastic or materialistic and moreover " pa- 
triotic " spirit, cannot refuse to serve, as children who are 
sent to school cannot refuse to obey. Having entered the 
service, these youths, whatever their convictions, are — thanks 
to artful discipline, elaborated during centuries — inevitably 
transformed in one year into submissive tools in the hands 
of the authorities. If rare cases occur — one out of ten 
thousand — of refusals of military service, this is accomplished 
only by so-called " sectarians " who act thus out of religious 
convictions unrecognised by the Governments. Therefore, 
at present, in the European world — if only the Governments 
desire to retain their power, and they cannot but desire this, 
because the abolition of power would involve the downfall of 
the rulers — no serious rising can be organised; and if any 
thing of the kind be organised it will always be suppressed, and 
will have no other consequences than the destruction of many 
light-minded individuals and the increase of governmental 
power. This may not be seen by revolutionists and Social- 
ists who, following out-lived traditions, are carried away by 
strife, which for some has become a definite profession; but 
it cannot fail to be recognised by all those who freely con- 
sider historical events. 

This phenomenon is quite new, and therefore the activity 
of those who desire to alter the existing order should con- 
form with this new position of existing powers in the Euro- 
pean world. 

Ill 

The struggle between the State and the people which has 
lasted during long ages at first produced the substitution of 
one power for another, of this one by yet a third, and so on. 
But in our European world from the middle of last century 
the power of the existing Governments, thanks to the tech- 
nical improvements of our time, has been furnished with such 
means of defence that strife with it has become impossible. 
In proportion as this power has attained greater and greater 
degree it has demonstrated more and more its inconsistency: 



TOLSTOY 105 

there has become ever more evident that inner contradiction 
which consists in combination of the idea of a beneficent 
power and of violence, which constitutes the essence of power. 
It became obvious that power, which, to be beneficent, should 
be in the hands of the very best men, was always in the hands 
of the worst; as the best men, owing to the very nature of 
power — consisting in the use of violence towards one's neigh- 
bor — could not desire power, and therefore never obtained 
or retained it. 

This contradiction is so self-evident that it would seem 
everyone must have always seen it. Yet such are the pom- 
pous surroundings of power, the fear which it inspires, and 
the inertia of tradition, that centuries and indeed thousands 
of years passed before men understood their error. Only 
in latter days have men begun to understand that notwith- 
standing the solemnity with which power always drapes it- 
self its essence consists in threatening people with the loss 
of property, liberty, life, and in realising these threats; and 
that, therefore, those who, like kings, emperors, ministers, 
judges, and others, devote their life to this activity without 
any object except the desire to retain their advantageous posi- 
tion, not only are not the best, but are always the worst men, 
and being such, cannot by their power contribute to the wel- 
fare of humanity, but on the contrary have always represented, 
and still represent, one of the principal causes of the social 
calamities of mankind. Therefore power, which formerly 
elicited in the people enthusiasm and devotion, at present 
calls forth amongst the greater and best portion of man- 
kind not only indifference, but often contempt and hatred. 
This more enlightened section of mankind now understands 
that all that pompous show with which power surrounds it- 
self is naught else than the red shirt and velvet trousers of 
the executioner, which distinguishes him from other convicts 
because he takes upon himself the most immoral and infamous 
work — that of executing people. 

Power, being conscious of this attitude towards itself con- 
tinually growing amongst the people, in our days no longer 
leans upon the higher foundations of anointed right, popular 
election, or inborn virtue of the rulers, but rests solely upon 



106 TOLSTOY 

coercion. Resting thus merely on coercion, therefore, it still 
more loses the confidence of the people, and losing this con- 
fidence it is more and more compelled to have recourse to 
the seizure of all the activities of national life, and owing to 
this seizure it inspires greater and greater dissatisfaction. 



IV 

Power has become invincible, and rests no longer on the 
higher national foundations of anointed right, election, or 
representation, but on violence alone. At the same time the 
people cease to believe in power and to respect it, and they 
submit to it only because they cannot do otherwise. 

Precisely since the middle of the last century, from the 
very time when power had simultaneously become invincible 
and lost its prestige, there begins to appear amongst the 
people the teaching that liberty — not that fantastical liberty 
which is preached by the adherents of coercion when they 
affirm that a man who is compelled, under fear of punishment, 
to fulfill the orders of other men, is free, but that only true 
liberty, which consists in every man being able to live and 
act according to his own judgment, to pay or not to pay 
taxes, to enter or not to enter the military service, to be 
friendly or inimical to neighboring nations — that such true 
liberty is incompatible with the power of certain men over 
others. 

According to this teaching, power is not, as was formerly 
thought, something divine and majestic, neither is it an in- 
dispensable condition of social life, but is merely the result 
of the coarse violence of some men over others. Be the power 
in the hands of Louis XVI., or the Committee of National De- 
fence, or the Directory, or the Consulate, or Napoleon, or 
Louis XVIII., or the Sultan, the President, the chief Man- 
darin, or the first Minister, — wheresoever it be, there will 
exist the power of certain men over others, and there will 
not be freedom, but there will be the oppression of one por- 
tion of mankind by another. Therefore power must be abol- 
ished. 

But how to abolish it, and how, when it is abolished, to 



TOLSTOY 107 

arrange things so that, without the existence of power, men 
should not return to the savage state of coarse violence to- 
wards each other? 

All anarchists — as the preachers of this teaching are 
called — quite uniformly answer the first question by recog- 
nising that if this power is to be really abolished it must be 
abolished not by force but by men's consciousness of its use- 
lessness and evil. To the second question, as to how society 
should be organized without power, anarchists answer variously. 

The Englishman Godwin, who lived at the end of the 18th 
and the beginning of the 19th centuries, and the Frenchman 
Proudhon, who wrote in the middle of the last century, an- 
swer the first question by saying that for the abolition of 
power the consciousness of men is sufficient, that the general 
welfare (Godwin) and justice (Proudhon) are transgressed 
by power, and that if the conviction were dissseminated 
amongst the people that general welfare and justice can be 
realised only in the absence of power, then power would of 
itself disappear. 

As to the second question, by what means will the order 
of a new society be ensured without power, both Godwin 
and Proudhon answer that people who are led by the con- 
sciousness of general welfare (according to Godwin) and of 
justice (according to Proudhon) will instinctively find the 
most universally rational and just forms of life. 

Whereas other anarchists, such as Bakounine and Kropot- 
kin, although they also recognise the consciousness in the 
masses of the harmfulness of power and its incompatibility 
with human progress, nevertheless as a means for its aboli- 
tion regard revolution as possible, and even as necessary, for 
which revolution they recommend men to prepare. The 
second question they answer by the assertion that as soon as 
State organisation and property shall be abolished men will 
naturally combine in rational, free, and advantageous con- 
ditions of life. 

To the question as to the means of abolishing power, the 
German Max Stirner and the American Tucker answer al- 
most in the same way as the others. Both of them believe 



108 TOLSTOY 

that if men understood that the personal interest of each in- 
dividual is a perfectly sufficient and legitimate guide for men's 
actions^ and that power only impedes the full manifestation 
of this leading factor of human life^ then power will perish 
of itself^ both owing to disobedience of it and above all, as 
Tucker says_, to non-participation in it. Their answer to the 
second question is, that men freed from the superstition and 
necessity of power and merely following their personal in- 
terests would of themselves combine into forms of life most 
adequate and advantageous for each. 

All these teachings are perfectly correct in this — that if 
power is to be abolished, this can be accomplished in nowise 
by force, as power having abolished power will remain power ; 
but that this abolition of power can be accomplished only by 
the elucidation in the consciousness of men of the truth that 
power is useless and harmful, and that men should neither 
obey it nor participate in it. This truth is incontrovertible: 
power can be abolished only by the rational consciousness of 
men. But in what should this consciousness consist? The 
anarchists believe that this consciousness can be founded upon 
considerations about common welfare, justice, progress, or 
the personal interests of men. But not to mention that all 
these factors are not in mutual agreement, the very defini- 
tions of what constitutes general welfare, justice, progress, or 
personal interest are understood by men in infinitely various 
ways. Therefore it is impossible to suppose that people 
who are not agreed amongst themselves, and who differently 
understand the bases on which they oppose power, could 
abolish power so firmly fixed and so ably defended. More- 
over, the supposition that considerations about general wel- 
fare, justice, or the law of progress can suffice to secure that 
men, freed from coercion, but having no motive for sacrific- 
ing their personal welfare to the general welfare, should 
combine in just conditions without violating their mutual lib- 
erty, is yet more unfounded. The Utilitarian egotistical 
theory of Max Stirner and Tucker, who affirm that by each 
following his own personal interest just relations would be 
introduced between all, is uot only arbitrary, but in com- 



TOLSTOY 109 

plete contradiction to what in reality has taken place and is 
taking place. 

So that, whilst correctly recognising spiritual weapons as 
the only means of abolishing power, the anarchistic teach- 
ing, holding an irreligious materialistic life conception, does 
not possess this spiritual weapon, and is confined to conjec- 
tures and fancies which give the advocates of coercion the 
possibility of denying its true foundations, owing to the in- 
efficiency of the suggested means of realising this teaching. 

This spiritual weapon is simply the one long ago known 
to men, which has always destroyed power and always given 
those who used it complete and inalienable freedom. This 
weapon is but this: a devout understanding of life, accord- 
ing to which man regards his earthly existence as only a 
fragmentary manifestation of the complete life, connecting 
his own life with infinite life, and, recognising his highest wel- 
fare in the fulfillment of the laws of this infinite life, re- 
gards the fulfillment of these laws as more binding upon him- 
self than the fulfillment of any human laws whatsoever. 

Only such a religious conception, uniting all men in the 
same understanding of life, incompatible with subordination 
to power and participation in it, can truly destroy power. 

Only such a life-conception will give men the possibility — 
without joining in violence — of combining into rational and 
just forms of life. 

Strange to say, only after men have been brought by life 
itself to the conviction that existing power is invincible, and 
in our time cannot be overthrown by force, have they come 
to understand that ridiculously self-evident truth that power 
and all the evil produced by it are but results of bad life in 
men, and that therefore, for the abolition of power and the 
evil it produces, good life on the part of men is necessary. 

Men are beginning to understand this. And now they 
have further to understand that there is only one means for a 
good life amongst men: the profession and realisation of a 
religious teaching natural and comprehensible to the majority 
of mankind. 

Only by means of professing and realising such a religious 



no TOLSTOY^ 

teaching can men attain the ideal which has now arisen in 
their consciousness^ and towards which they are striving. 

All other attempts at the abolition of power and at organis- 
ing, without power, a good life amongst men are only a futile 
expenditure of effort, and do not bring near the aim towards 
which men are striving, but only remove them from it. 



V 

This is what I wish to say to you, sincere people, who, not 
satisfied with egotistic life, desire to give your strength to 
the service of your brothers. If you participate, or desire to 
participate, in governmental activity, and by* this means to 
serve the people, then consider: What is every Government 
resting on power .^ And having put this question to yourself, 
you cannot but see that there is no Government which does 
not commit, does not prepare to commit, does not rest upon, 
violence, robbery, murder. 

An American writer, little known — Thoreau, — in his es- 
say on why it is men's duty to disobey the Government, re- 
lates how he refused to pay the Government of the United 
States a tax of one dollar, explaining his refusal on the 
grounds that he does not desire his dollar to participate in 
the activity of a Government which sanctions the slavery of 
the negroes. Can not, and should not, the same thing be 
felt in relation to his Government, I do not say by a Rus- 
sian, but by a citizen of the most progressive State — the 
United States of America, with its action in Cuba and the 
Philippines, with its relation to negroes and the banishment 
of the Chinese; or of England, with its opium, and Boers; or 
of France, with its horrors of militarism.^ 

Therefore, a sincere man, wishing to serve his fellow-men, 
if only he has seriously realised what every Government is, 
cannot participate in it otherwise than on the strength of the 
principle that the end justifies the means. 

But such an activity has always been harmful for those in 
whose interests it was undertaken, as well as for those who 
had recourse to it. 

The thing is very simple. You wish, by submitting to the 



TOLSTOY 111 

Government and making use of its laws, to snatch from it 
more liberty and rights for the people. But the liberty and 
the rights of the people are in inverse ratio to the power of 
the Government, and in general of the ruling classes. The 
more liberty and rights the people will have, the less power 
and advantage will the Government gain from them. Gov- 
ernments know this, and, having all the power in their hands, 
they readily allow all kinds of Liberal prattle, and even some 
insignificant Liberal reforms, which justify its power, but they 
immediately coercively arrest Liberal inclinations which 
threaten not only the advantages of the rulers but their very 
existence. So that all your efforts to serve the people through 
the power of governmental administration or through Parlia- 
ments will only lead to this — that you, by your activity, will 
increase the power of the ruling classes, and will, according to 
the degree of your sincerity, unconsciously or consciously par- 
ticipate in this power. So it is in regard to those who desire 
to serve the people by means of the existing State organisa- 
tions. 

If, on the other hand, you belong to the category of sin- 
cere people desiring to serve the nation by revolutionary. 
Socialistic activity, then (not to speak of the insufficiency of 
aim involved in that material welfare of men towards which 
you are striving, which never satisfied anyone) consider the 
means which you possess for its attainment. These means 
are, in the first place and above all, immoral, containing 
falsehood, deception, violence, murder; secondly, these means 
can in no case attain their end. The strength and caution 
of Governments defending their existence are in our time so 
great that not only can no ruse, deception, or harsh action 
overthrow them — they cannot even shake them. All revo- 
lutionary attempts only furnish new justification for the vio- 
lence of Governments, and increase their power. 

But even if we admit the impossible — that a revolution 
in our time could be crowned with success — then, in the 
first place, why should we expect that, contrary to all which 
has ever taken place, the power which has overturned an- 
other power can increase the liberty of men and become more 
beneficent than the one it has overthrown.^ Secondly, if 



112 TOLSTOY 

the conjecture^ contrary to common sense and experience, 
were possible, that power having abolished power could give 
people the freedom necessary to establish those conditions of 
life which they regard as most advantageous for them- 
selves, then there would be no reason whatever to suppose 
that people living an egotistical life could establish amongst 
themselves better conditions than the previous ones. 

Let the Queen of the Dahomeys establish the most Liberal 
constitution, and let her even realise that nationalisation of 
the instruments of labor which, in the opinion of the Social- 
ists, would save people from all their calamities — it would 
still be necessary for someone to have power in order that 
the constitution should work and the instruments of labor 
should not be seized into private hands. But as long as these 
people are Dahomeys, with their life-conception, it is evi- 
dent that — although in another form — the violence of a 
certain portion of the Dahomeys over the others will be the 
same as without a constitution and without the nationalisation 
of the instruments of labor. Before realising the Socialistic 
organisation it would be necessary for the Dahomeys to lose 
their taste for bloody tyranny. Just the same is necessary 
for Europeans also. 

In order that men may live a common life without oppres- 
sing each other, there is necessary, not an organisation sup- 
ported by force, but a moral state in accordance with which 
people, from their inner convictions and not by coercion, 
should act towards others as they desire that others should 
act towards them. Such people do exist. They exist in re- 
ligious Christian communities in America, in Russia, in Can- 
ada. Such people do indeed, without laws supported by force, 
live the communal life without oppressing each other. 

Thus the rational activity proper to our time for men of 
our Christian society is only one: the profession and preach- 
ing by word and deed of the last and highest religious teach- 
ing known to us, of the Christian teaching; not of that Chris- 
tian teaching which, whilst submitting to the existing order 
of life, demands of men only the fulfillment of external ritual, 
or is satisfied with faith in and the preaching of salvation 
through redemption, but of that vital Christianity the in- 



TOLSTOY 11^ 

evitable condition of which is, not only non-participation in 
the action of the Government, but disobedience to its de- 
mands, since these demands — from taxes and custom-houses 
to law courts and armies — are all opposed to this true 
Christianity. If this be so, then it is evident that it is not to 
the establishment of new forms that the activity of men de- 
sirous of serving their neighbor should be directed, but to the 
alteration and perfecting of their own characters and those 
of other people. 

Those who act in the other way generally think that the 
forms of life and the character of life-conception of men may 
simultaneously improve. But thinking thus, they make the 
usual mistake of taking the result for the cause and the cause 
for the result or for an accompanying condition. 

The alteration of the character and life-conception of men 
inevitably brings with it the alteration of those forms in which 
men had lived, whereas the alteration of the forms of life not 
only does not contribute to the alteration of the character and 
life-conception of men, but, more than anything else, ob- 
structs this alteration by directing the attention and activity 
of men into a false channel. To alter the forms of life^ 
hoping thereby to alter the character and life-conception of 
men, is like altering in various ways the position of wet wood 
in a stove, believing that there can be such a position of wet 
fuel as will cause it to catch fire. Only dry wood will take 
fire independently of the position in which it is placed. 

This error is so obvious that people could not submit to it 
if there were not a reason which rendered them liable to it. 
This reason consists in this: that the alteration of the char- 
acter of men must begin in themselves, and demands much 
struggle and labor ; whereas the alteration of the forms of the 
life of others is attained easily without inner effort over one- 
self, and has the appearance of a very important and far- 
reaching activity. 

It is against this error, the source of the greatest evil, that 
I warn you, men sincerely desirous of serving your neighbor 
by your lives. 



114 TOLSTOY 



VI 



" But we cannot live quietly occupying ourselves with the 
profession and teaching of Christianity when we see around 
us suffering people. We wish to serve them actively. For 
this we are ready to surrender our labor, even our lives/' 
say people with more or less sincere indignation. 

How do you know, I would answer these people, that you 
are called to serve men precisely by that method which ap- 
pears to you the most useful and practical? What you say 
only shows that you have already decided that we cannot serve 
mankind by a Christian life, and that true service lies only 
in political activity, which attracts you. 

All politicians think likewise, and they are all in opposi- 
tion to each other, and therefore certainly cannot all be right. 
It would be very well if everyone could serve men as he 
pleased, but such is not the case, and there exists only one 
means of serving men and improving their condition. This 
sole means consists in the profession and realisation of a 
teaching from which flows the inner work of perfecting one- 
self. The self-perfecting of a true Christian, always living 
naturally amongst men and not avoiding them, consists in 
the establishment of better and even more loving relations 
between himself and other men. The establishment of lov- 
ing relations between men cannot but improve their general 
conditions, although the form of this improvement remains 
unknown to man. 

It is true that in serving through governmental activity, 
parliamentary or revolutionary, we can determine beforehand 
the results we wish to attain, and at the same time profit 
by all the advantages of a pleasant, luxurious life, and ob- 
tain a brilliant position, the approval of men, and great fame. 
If those who participate in such activity have indeed some- 
times to suffer, it is such a possibility of suffering as in every 
strife is redeemed by the possibility of success. In the mili- 
tary activity, suffering and even death are still more possible, 
and yet only the least moral and the egotistic choose it. 

On the other hand, the religious activity, in the first place, 
does not show us the results which it attains; and secondly. 



TOLSTOY lis 

this activity demands the renunciation of external success, 
and not only does not afford a brilliant position and fame, 
but brings men to the lowest position from the social point 
of view — subjects them not only to contempt and condemna- 
tion, but to the most cruel sufferings and death. 

Thus, in our time of universal conscription, religious activity 
compels every man who is called to the service of murder 
to bear all those punishments with which the Government 
punishes for refusal of military service. Therefore, re- 
ligious activity is difficult, but it alone gives man the con- 
sciousness of true freedom, and the assurance that he is do- 
ing that wliich he should do. 

Consequently, this activity alone is truly fruitful, attain- 
ing not only its highest object, but also, incidentally and in 
the most natural and simple way, those results towards which 
social reformers strive in such artificial ways. 

Thus there is only one means of serving men, which con- 
sists in oneself living a good life. And not only is this means 
not visionary — as it is regarded by those to whom it is not 
advantageous, — but all other means are visionary, by which 
the leaders of the masses allure them into a false way, dis- 
tracting them from that method which alone is true. 

VII 

" But if this be so, when will it come to pass ? " say those 
who wish to see the realisation of this ideal as quickly as pos- 
sible. 

It would, of course, be much better if one could do this 
very quickly, immediately. 

It would be very well if one could quickly, immediately, 
grow a forest. But one cannot do this; one must wait till 
the seeds shoot, then the leaves, then the branches, and then 
the trees will grow up. 

One can stick branches into the ground, and for a short 
time they will resemble a wood, but it will be only a re- 
semblance. The same with a rapid establishment of good 
social order amongst men. One can arrange a resemblance of 
good order, as do the Governments, but these imitations 



116 TOLSTOY 

only remove the possibility of true order. They remove it, 
firstly, by cheating men, showing them the image of good 
order where it does not exist; and, secondly, because these 
imitations of order are attained only by power, and power 
depraves men, rulers as well as ruled, and therefore makes 
true order less possible. 

Therefore, attempts at a rapid realisation of the ideal not 
only do not contribute to its actual realisation, but more than 
anything impede it. 

So that the solution of the question whether the ideal of 
mankind — a well-organised society without violence — will 
be organised soon, or not soon, depends upon whether the 
rulers of the masses who sincerely wish the people good will 
soon understand that nothing removes men so much from the 
realisation of their ideal as that which they are now doing 
— namely, continuing to maintain old superstitions, or deny- 
ing all religions, and directing the people's activity to the 
service of the Government, of revolution, of Socialism. If 
those men who sincerely wish to serve their neighbor were 
only to understand all the fruitlessness of those means of 
organising the welfare of men proposed by the supporters of 
the State, and by revolutionists — if only they were to under- 
stand that the one means by which men can be liberated from 
their sufferings consists in men themselves ceasing to live 
an egotistic heathen life, and beginning to live a universal 
Christian one, not recognising, as they do now, the possibility 
and the legality of using violence over one's neighbors, and 

rticipating in it for one's personal aims; but if, on the 
contrary, they were to follow in life the fundamental and 
highest law of acting towards others as one wishes others 
to act towards oneself — then very quickly would be over- 
thrown those irrational and cruel forms of life in which 
we now live, and new ones would develop corresponding 
to the new consciousness of men. 

Think only what enormous and splendid mental powers are 
now spent in the service of the State — which has outgrown 
its time — and in its defence from revolution; how much 
youthful and enthusiastic effort is spent on attempts at revo- 
lution, on an impossible struggle with the State; how much 



TOLSTOY 117 

is spent on unrealisable Socialistic dreamings. All this is not 
only delaying but rendering impossible the realisation of the 
welfare towards which all men are striving. How would it 
be if all those who are spending their powers so fruitlessly, 
and often with harm to their neighbors, were to direct them 
all to that which alone affords the possibility of good social 
life — to their inner self-perfection? 

How many times would one be able to build a new house, 
out of new solid material, if all those efforts which have been 
and are now being spent on propping up the old house 
were used resolutely and conscientiously for the preparation 
of the material for a new house and the building thereof, 
which, although obviously it could not at first be as luxurious 
and convenient for some chosen ones as was the old one, 
would undoubtedly be more stable, and would afford the 
complete possibility for those improvements which are neces- 
sary, not for the chosen only, but also for all men. 

So that all I have here said amounts to the simple, gen- 
erally comprehensible, and irrefutable truth: that in order 
that good life should exist amongst men it is necessary that 
men should be good. 

There is only one way of influencing men towards a good 
life: namely, to live a good life oneself. Therefore the ac- 
tivity of those who desire to contribute to the establishment 
of good life amongst men can and should only consist in 
efforts towards inner perfection — in the fulfilment of that 
which is expressed in the Gospel by the words: " Be ye 
perfect even as your Father in Heaven." 



OSCAR WILDE 

(1856-1900) 

THE SOUL OF MAN UNDER SOCIALISM ^ 

Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by 
converting private property into public wealth, and substitut- 
ing co-operation for competition, will restore society to its 
proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and in- 
sure the material well-being of each member of the com- 
munity. It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its 
proper environment. But, for the full development of Life 
to its highest mode of perfection, something more is needed. 
What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authori- 
tarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power 
as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are 
to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will 
be worse than the first. At present, in consequence of the 
existence of private property, a great many people are 
enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of Individual- 
ism. They are either under no necessity to work for their 
living, or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is 
really congenial to them, and gives them pleasure. These 
are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men 
of culture — in a word, the real men, the men who have 
realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial 
realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a great many 
people who, having no private property of their own, and 
being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled 
to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite 
uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the 

1 First published in 1891. A few pages at the beginning, and a 
rather lengthy section toward the middle of the essay describing the 
baleful effects of the British public's attempt to exercise authority 
over art and artists, have been omitted here. 

118 



WILDE 119 

peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. 
These are the poor; and amongst them there is no grace of 
manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation, or culture, or 
refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their collective 
force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But it is 
only the material result that it gains, and the man who is 
poor is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely 
the infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding 
him, crushes him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that 
case he is far more obedient. 

Of course, it might be said that the Individualism generated 
under conditions of private property is not always, or even 
as a rule, of a fine or wonderful type, and that the poor, 
if they have not culture and charm, have still many virtues. 
Both these statements would be quite true. The possession 
of private property is very often extremely demoralising, 
and that is, of course, one of the reasons why Socialism 
wants to get rid of the institution. In fact, property is really 
a nuisance. Some years ago people went about the country 
saying that property has duties. They said it so often and 
so tediously that, at last, the Church has begun to say it. 
One hears it now from every pulpit. It is perfectly true. 
Property not merely has duties, but has so many duties that 
its possession to any large extent is a bore. It involves 
endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, end- 
less bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand 
it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the 
rich we must get rid of it. The virtues of the poor may be 
readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are 
often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of 
them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never 
grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, 
and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they 
feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitu- 
tion, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some im- 
pertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to 
tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grate- 
ful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? 
They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to 



120 WILDE 

know it. As for being discontened, a man who would not be 
discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode 
of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience^ in the eyes 
of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. 
It is through disobedience that progress has been made, 
through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the 
poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift 
to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advis- 
ing a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country 
laborer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man 
should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly- 
fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should 
either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many 
to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg 
than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg. No: a 
poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and re- 
bellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. 
He is at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous 
poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly 
admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, 
and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must 
also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite understand a man 
accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its 
accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those con- 
ditions to realize some form of beautiful and intellectual life. 
But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is 
marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce 
in their continuance. 

However, the explanation is not really difficult to find. It 
is simply this. Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrad- 
ing, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature 
of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffer- 
ing. They have to be told of it by other people, and they 
often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great em- 
ployers of labor against agitators is unquestionably true. 
Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who 
come down to some perfectly contented class of the com- 
munity, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That 
is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. 



WILDE 121 

Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no ad- 
vance towards civilisation. Slavery was put down in America, 
not in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves, 
or even any express desire on their part that they should be 
free. It was put down entirely through the grossly illegal 
conduct of certain agitators in Boston and elsewhere, who 
were rot slaves themselves, nor owners of slaves, nor had 
anything to do with the question really. It was, undoubtedly, 
the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began the whole 
thing. And it is curious to note that from the slaves them- 
selves they received, not merely very little assistance, but 
hardly any sympathy even; and when at the close of the war 
the slaves found themselves free, found themselves indeed so 
absolutely free that they were free to starve, many of them 
bitterly regretted the new state of things. To the thinker, 
the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution 
is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, 
but that the starved peasant of the Vendee voluntarily went 
out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism. 

It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. 
For while under the present system a very large number 
of people can lead lives of a certain amount of freedom and 
expression and happiness, under an industrial-barrack system, 
or a system of economic tyranny, nobody would be able to 
have any such freedom at all. It is to be regretted that a por- 
tion of our community should be practically in slavery, but to 
propose to solve the problem by enslaving the entire com- 
munity is childish. Every man must be left quite free to 
choose his own work. No form of compulsion must be exer- 
cised over him. If there is, his work will not be good for 
him, will not be good in itself, and will not be good for others. 
And by work I simply mean activity of any kind. 

I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously 
propose that an inspector should call every morning at each 
house to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labor 
for eight hours. Humanity has got beyond that stage, and 
reserves such a form of life for the people whom, in a very 
arbitrary manner, it chooses to call criminals. But I con- 
fess that many of the socialistic views that I have come 



122 WILDE 

across seem to me to be tainted with ideas of authority, if 
not of actual compulsion. Of course, authority and compul- 
sion are out of the question. All association must be quite 
voluntary. It is only in voluntary associations that men are 
fine. 

But it may be asked how Individualism, which is now more 
or less dependent on the existence of private property for 
its development, will benefit by the abolition of such private 
property. The answer is very simple. It is true that, under 
existing conditions, a few men who have had private means 
of their own, such as Byron, Shelley, Browning, Victor Hugo, 
Baudelaire, and others, have been able to realise their person- 
ality more or less completely. Not one of these men ever 
did a single day's work for hire. They were relieved from 
poverty. They had an immense advantage. The question is 
whether it would be for the good of Individualism that such 
an advantage should be taken away. Let us suppose that 
it is taken away. What happens then to Individualism? 
How will it benefit? 

It will benefit in this way. Under the new conditions In- 
dividualism will be far freer, far finer, and far more intensified 
than it is now. I am not talking of the great imaginatively- 
realised Individualism of such poets as I have mentioned, 
but of the great actual Individualism latent and potential in 
mankind generally. For the recognition of private property 
has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confus- 
ing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism 
entirely astray. It has made gain, not growth, its aim. So 
that man thought that the important thing was to have, and 
did not know that the important thing is to be. The true 
perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man 
is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set 
up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part 
of the community from being individual by starving them. 
It has debarred the other part of the community from being 
individual by putting them on the wrong road, and encumber- 
ing them. Indeed, so completely has man's personality been 
absorbed by his possessions that the English law has always 
treated offences against a man's property with far more sever- 



WILDE 123 

ity than offences against his person, and property is still the 
test of complete citizenship. The industry necessary for the 
making of money is also very demoralising. In a community 
like ours, where property confers immense distinction, social 
position, honor, respect, titles, and other pleasant things of 
the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes it his aim 
to accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and 
tediously accumulating it long after he has got far more 
than he wants, or can use, or enjoy, or perhaps even know 
of. Man will kill himself by overwork in order to secure 
property, and really, considering the enormous advantages 
that property brings, one is hardly surprised. One's regret 
is that society should be constructed on such a basis that man 
has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely 
develop what is wonderful, and fascinating, and delight- 
ful in him — in which, in fact, he misses the true pleasure 
and joy of living. He is also, under existing conditions, 
very insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be — 
often is — at every moment of his life at the mercy of things 
that are not under his control. If the wind blows an extra 
point or so, or the weather suddenly changes, or some trivial 
thing happens, his ship may go down, his speculations may 
go wrong, and he finds himself a poor man, with his social 
position quite gone. Now, nothing should be able to harm 
a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man 
at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is 
outside of him should be a matter of no importance. 

With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have 
true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste 
his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. 
One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. 
Most people exist, that is all. 

It is a question whether we have ever seen the full ex- 
pression of a personality, except on the imaginative plane of 
art. In action, we never have. Caesar, says Mommsen, was 
the complete and perfect man. But how tragically insecure 
was Caesar ! Wherever there is a man who exercises authoritv, 
there is a man who resists authority. Caesar was very per- 
fect, but his perfection travelled by too dangerous a road. 



124 WILDE 

Marcus Aurelius was the perfect man, says Renan. Yes; 
the great emperor was a perfect man. But how intolerable 
were the endless claims upon him ! He staggered under the 
burden of the empire. He was conscious how inadequate one 
man was to bear the weight of that Titan and too vast orb. 
What I mean by a perfect man is one who develops under 
perfect conditions ; one who is not wounded, or worried, or 
maimed, or in danger. Most personalities have been obliged 
to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction. 
Byron's personality, for instance, was terribly wasted in its 
battle with the stupidity and hypocrisy and Philistinism of 
the English. Such battles do not always intensify strength; 
they often exaggerate weakness. Byron was never able to 
give us what he might have given us. Shelley escaped better. 
Like Byron, he got out of England as soon as possible. But 
he was not so well known. If the English had realised what 
a great poet he really was, they would have fallen on him 
with tooth and nail, and made his life as unbearable to him 
as they possibly could. But he was not a remarkable figure 
in society, and consequently he escaped, to a certain degree. 
Still, even in Shelley the note of rebellion is sometimes too 
strong. The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, 
but peace. 

It will be a marvellous thing — the true personality of man 
— when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flower- 
like, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will 
never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will 
know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about 
knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be 
measured by material things. It will have nothing. And 
yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, 
it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always 
meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It 
will love them because they will be different. And yet while 
it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful 
thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man 
will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the per- 
sonality of a child. 

In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if 



WILDE 125 

men desire that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop 
none the less surely. For it will not worry itself about the 
past, nor care whether things happened or did not happen. 
Nor will it admit any laws but its own lav/s ; nor any authority 
but its own authority. Yet it will love those who sought to 
intensify it, and speak often of them. And of these Christ 
was one. 

" Know thyself " was written over the portal of the antique 
world. Over the portal of the new world, " Be thyself " 
shall be written. And the message of Christ to man was 
simply " Be thyself.' That is the secret of Christ. 

When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personali- 
ties, just as when he talks about the rich he simply means 
people who have not developed their personalities. Jesus 
moved in a community that allowed the accumulation of priv- 
ate property just as ours does, and the gospel that he preached 
was, not that in such a community it is an advantage for a 
man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, 
unwholesome clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwell- 
ings, and a disadvantage for a man to live under healthy, 
pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a view would have been 
wrong there and then, and would, of course, be still more 
wrong now and in England; for as man moves northward the 
material necessities of life become of more vital importance, 
and our society is infinitely more complex, and displays far 
greater extremes of luxury and pauperism than any society 
of the antique world. What Jesus meant, was this. He said 
to man, " You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. 
Be yourself. Don't imagine that your perfection lies in ac- 
cumulating or possessing external things. Your perfection 
is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would 
not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a 
man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, 
there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken 
from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external 
things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal 
property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, 
continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism 
at every step." It is to be noted that Jesus never says that 



126 WILDE 

impoverished people are necessarily good, or wealthy people 
necessarily bad. That would not have been true. Wealthy 
people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more 
moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only 
one class in the community that thinks more about money 
than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of 
nothing else. That is the misery of being poor. What Jesus 
does say, is that man reaches his perfection, not through 
what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely 
through what he is. And so the wealthy young man who 
comes to Jesus is represented as a thoroughly good citizen, 
who has broken none of the laws of his state, none of the 
commandments of his religion. He is quite respectable, in 
the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word. Jesus says 
to him, " You should give up private property. It hinders 
you from realising your perfection. It is a drag upon you. 
It is a burden. Your personality does not need it. It is 
within you, and not outside of you^ that you will find what 
you really are, and what you really want." To his own 
friends he says the same thing. He tells them to be them- 
selves, and not to be always worrying about other things. 
What do other things matter? Man is complete in himself. 
When they go into the world, the world will disagree with 
them. That is inevitable. The world hates Individualism. 
But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and 
self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give 
him their coat, just to show that material things are of no 
importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer 
back. What does it signify.'' The things people say of a 
man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion 
is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual 
violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to 
fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man 
can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality 
can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all 
things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge 
them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. 
A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He 
may keep the law and yet be worthless. He may break the 



WILDE 127 

law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing 
anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet 
realise through that sin his true perfection. 

There was a woman who was taken in adultery. We 
are not told the history of her love, but that love must have 
been very great; for Jesus said that her sins were forgiven 
her, not because she repented, but because her love was so 
intense and wonderful. Later on, a short time before his 
death, as he sat at a feast, the woman came in and poured 
costly perfumes on his hair. His friends tried to interfere 
with her, and said that it was extravagance, and that the 
money that the perfume cost should have been expended 
on charitable relief of people in want, or something of that 
kind. Jesus did not accept that view. He pointed out that 
the material needs of Man were great and very permanent, 
but that the spiritual needs of Man were greater still, and 
that in one divine moment, and by selecting its own mode 
of expression, a personality might make itself perfect. The 
world worships the woman, even now, as a saint. 

Yes; there are suggestive things in Individualism. Social- 
ism annihilates family life, for instance. With the abolition 
of private property, marriage in its present form must dis- 
appear. This is part of the programme. Individualism ac- 
cepts this and makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal 
restraint into a form of freedom that will help the full de- 
velopment of personality, and make the love of man and 
woman more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling. 
Jesus knew this. He rejected the claims of family life, 
although they existed in his day and community in a very 
marked form. "Who is my mother? Who are my 
brothers ? " he said, when he was told that they wished to 
speak to him. When one of his followers asked leave to go 
and bury his father, " Let the dead bury the dead," was 
his terrible answer. He would allow no claim whatsoever to 
be made on personality. 

And so he who would lead a Christlike life is he who is 
perfectly and absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, 
or a great man of science; or a young student at a Uni- 
versity, or one who watches sheep upon a moor; or a maker 



128 WILDE 

of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God, like 
Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman 
who throws his net into the sea. It does not matter what he 
is, as long as he realises the perfection of the soul that is 
within him. All imitation in morals and in life is wrong. 
Through the streets of Jerusalem at the present day crawls 
one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his shoulders. 
He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation. 
Father Damien was Christlike when he went out to live 
with the lepers, because in such service he realised fully 
what was best in him. But he was not more Christlike than 
Wagner when he realised his soul in music; or than Shelley, 
when he realised his soul in song. There is no one type 
for man. There are as many perfections as there are im- 
perfect men. And while to the claims of charity a man may 
yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man 
may yield and remain free at all. 

individualism, then, is what through Socialism we are to 
attain. As a natural result the State must give up all idea 
of government. It must give it up because, as a wise man 
once said many centuries before Christ, there is such a thing 
as leaving mankind alone; there is no such thing as govern- 
ing mankind. All modes of government are failures. Des- 
potism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was 
probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to 
the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High 
hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means 
simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the 
people. It has been found out. I must say that it was 
high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades 
those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is 
exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it 
produces a good eiFect, by creating, or at any rate bring- 
ing out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to kill 
it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and 
accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoral- 
ising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible 
pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their 
lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, with- 



WILDE 129 

out ever realising that they are probably thinking other 
people's thoughts, living by other people's standards, wearing 
practically what one may call other people's second-hand 
clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. 
" He who would be free," says a fine thinker, " must not con- 
form." And authority, by bribing people to conform, produces 
a very gross kind of over-fed barbarism amongst us. 

With authority, punishment will pass away. This will be 
a great gain — a gain, in fact, of incalculable value. As one 
reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for 
schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of 
each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by crimes that the 
wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good 
have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised 
by the habitual employment of punishment, than it is by the 
occurrence of crime. It obviously follows that the more 
punishment is inflicted the more crime is produced, and most 
modern legislation has clearly recognised this, and has made 
it its task to diminish punishment as far as it thinks it can. 
Wherever it has really diminished it, the results have always 
been extremely good. The less punishment, the less crime. 
When there is no punishment at all, crime will either cease 
to exist, or, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a 
very distressing form of dementia, to be cured by care and 
kindness. For what are called criminals nowadays are not 
criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of 
modern crime. That indeed is the reason why our criminals 
are, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psy- 
chological point of view. They are not marvellous Macbeths 
and terrible Vautrins. They are merely what ordinary, 
respectable commonplace people would be if they had not got 
enough to eat. When private property is abolished there will 
be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to 
exist. Of course, all crimes are not crimes against property, 
though such are the crimes that the English law, valuing 
what a man has more than what a man is, punishes with 
the harshest and most horrible severity (if we except the 
crime of murder, and regard death as worse than penal 
servitude, a point on which our criminals, I believe, disagree). 



130 WILDE 

But though a crime may not be against property^ it may 
spring from the misery and rage and depression produced 
by our wrong system of property-holding, and so^ when that 
system is abolished, will disappear. When each member of 
the community has sufficient for his wants, and is not inter- 
fered with by his neighbor, it will not be an object of any 
interest to him to interfere with anyone else. Jealousy, which 
is an extraordinary source of crime in modern life, is an 
emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of property, 
and under Socialism and Individualism will die out. It is 
remarkable that in communistic tribes jealousy is entirely un- 
known. 

Now as the State is not to govern, it may be asked what 
the State is to do. The State is to be a voluntary association 
that will organize labor, and be the manufacturer and dis- 
tributor of necessary commodities. The State is to make 
what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful. 
And as I have mentioned the word labor, I cannot help say- 
ing that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked 
nowadays about the dignity of manual labor. There is noth- 
ing necessarily dignified about manual labor at all, and most 
of it is absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally 
injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find 
pleasure, and many forms of labor are quite pleasureless 
activities, and should be regarded as such. To sweep a slushy 
crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is 
blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, 
moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To 
sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for 
something better than disturbing dirt. All work of that kind 
should be done by a machine. 

And I have no doubt that it will be so. Up to the present, 
man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, 
and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man 
had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. 
This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system 
and our system of competition. One man owns a machine 
which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men 
are, in consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having 



WILDE 131 

no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving. The 
one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, 
and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and 
probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more 
than he really wants. Were that machine the property of 
all, everybody M^ould benefit by it. It would be an immense 
advantage to the community. All unintellectual labor, all 
monotonous, dull labor, all labor that deals with dreadful 
things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by 
machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and 
do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and 
clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do 
anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery 
competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery 
will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this is the 
future of machinery; and just as trees grow while the country 
gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing it- 
self, or enjoying cultivated leisure — which, and not labor, 
is the aim of man — or making beautiful things, or reading 
beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with ad- 
miration and delight, machinery will be doing all the neces- 
sary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that civilisation re- 
quires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless 
there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, 
culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human 
slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical 
slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the 
world depends. And when scientific men are no longer 
called upon to go down to a depressing East End and dis- 
tribute bad cocoa and worse blankets to starving people, they 
will have delightful leisure in which to devise wonderful and 
marvellous things for their own joy and the joy of every one 
else. There will be great storages of force for every city, 
and for every house if required, and this force man will con- 
vert into heat, light, or motion, according to his needs. Is 
this Utopian.^ A map of the world that does not include 
Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the 
one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when 
Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better 



132 WILDE 

country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias. 

Now, I have said that the community by means of organi- 
zation of machinery will supply the useful things, and that 
the beautiful things will be made by the individual. This 
is not merely necessary, but it is the only possible way by 
which we can get either the one or the other. An individual 
who has to make things for the use of others, and with refer- 
ence to their wants and their wishes, does not work with 
interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is 
best in him. Upon the other hand, whenever a community 
or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any 
kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art 
either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degener- 
ates into a low and ignoble form of craft. A work of art is 
the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes 
from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing 
to do with the fact that other people want what they want. 
Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other 
people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to 
be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, 
an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim 
to be considered as an artist. Art is the most intense mode 
of Individualism that the world has known. I am inclined 
to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the 
world has known. Crime, which, under certain conditions, 
may seem to have created Individualism, must take cognisance 
of other people and interfere with them. It belongs to the 
sphere of action. But alone, without any reference to his 
neighbors, without any interference, the artist can fashion a 
beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own 
pleaure, he is not an artist at all. 

And it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this 
intense form of Individualism that makes the public try to 
exercise over it an authority that is as immoral as it is 
ridiculous, and as corrupting as it is contemptible. It is not 
quite their fault. The public has always, and in every age, 
been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art 
to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their 
absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, 



WILDE 133 

to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse 
them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to 
distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own 
stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The 
public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very 
wide difference. If a man of science were told that the re- 
sults of his experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived 
at, should be of such a character that they would not upset 
the received popular notions on the subject, or disturb popular 
prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of people who knew noth- 
ing about science; if a philosopher were told that he had a 
perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought, 
provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were 
held by those who had never thought in any sphere at all 
— well, nowadays the man of science and the philosopher 
would be considerably amused. Yet it is really a very few 
years since both philosophy and science were subjected to 
brutal popular control, to authority in fact — the authority 
of either the general ignorance of the community, or the 
terror and greed for power of an ecclesiastical or govern- 
mental class. Of course, we have to a very great extent 
got rid of any attempt on the part of the community, or the 
Church, or the Government, to interfere with the individual- 
ism of speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with 
the individualism of imaginative art still lingers. In fact, 
it does more than linger; it is aggressive^ oiFensive, and 
brutalising. 

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most 
suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there 
is only one answer. The form of government that is most 
suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over 
him and his art is ridiculous. It has been stated that under 
despotisms artists have produced lovely work. This is not 
quite so. Artists have visited despots, not as subjects to be 
tyrannised over, but as wandering wonder-makers, as fascinat- 
ing vagrant personalities, to be entertained and charmed and 
suffered to be at peace, and allowed to create. There is this 
to be said in favor of the despot, that he, being an individual, 



134 WILDE 

may have culture, while the mob, being a monster, has none. 
One who is an Emperor and King may stoop down to pick 
up a brush for a painter, but when the democracy stoops down 
it is merely to throw mud. And yet the democracy have 
not so far to stoop as the emperor. In fact, when they want 
to throw mud they have not to stoop at all. But there 
is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all 
authority is equally bad. 

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot 
who tyrannises over the body. There is the despot who 
tyrannises over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannises 
over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. 
The second is called the Pope. The third is called the 
People. The Prince may be cultivated. Many Princes have 
been. Yet in the Prince there is danger. One thinks of 
Dante at the bitter feast in Verona, of Tasso in Ferrara's 
madman's cell. It is better for the artist not to live with 
Princes. The Pope may be cultivated. Many Popes have 
been; the bad Popes have been. The bad Popes loved 
Beauty, almost as passionately, nay, with as much passion 
as the good Popes hated Thought. To the wickedness of the 
Papacy humanity owes much. The goodness of the Papacy 
owes a terrible debt to humanity. Yet, though the Vatican 
has kept the rhetoric of its thunders, and lost the rod of its 
lightning, it is better for the artist not to live with Popes. 
It was a Pope who said of Cellini to a conclave of Cardinals 
that common laws and common authority were not made for 
men such as he; but it was a Pope who thrust Cellini into 
prison, and kept him there till he sickened with rage, and 
created unreal visions for himself, and saw the gilded sun 
enter his room, and grew so enamoured of it that he sought 
to escape, and crept out from tower to tower, and falling 
through dizzy air at dawn, maimed himself, and was by a vine- 
dresser covered with vine leaves, and carried in a cart to 
one who, loving beautiful things, had care of him. There 
is danger in Popes. And as for the People, what of them 
and their authority.'^ Perhaps of them and their authority 
one has spoken enough. Their authority is a thing blind, 
deaf, hideous, grotesque, tragic, amusing, serious, and obscene. 



WILDE 136 

It is impossible for the artist to live with the People. All 
despots bribe. The People bribe and brutalise. Who told 
them to exercise authority ? They were made to live, to listen, 
and to love. Someone has done them a great wrong. They 
have marred themselves by imitation of their inferiors. They 
have taken the sceptre of the Prince. How should they use 
it.'* They have taken the triple tiara of the Pope. How 
should they carry its burden? They are as a clown whose 
heart is broken. They are as a priest whose soul is not yet 
born. Let all who love Beauty pity them. Though they 
themselves love not Beauty, yet let them pity themselves. 
Who taught them the trick of tyranny.^ 

There are many other things that one might point out. 
One might point out how the Renaissance was great, be- 
cause it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself 
not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop 
freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and 
individual artists, and great and individual men. One might 
point out how Louis XIV., by creating the modern State, 
destroyed the individualism of the artist, and made things 
monstrous in their monotony of repetition, and contemptible 
in their conformity to rule, and destroyed throughout all 
France all those fine freedoms of expression that had made 
tradition new in beauty, and new modes one with antique 
form. But the past is of no importance. The present is 
of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. 
For the past is what man should not have been. The present 
is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists 
are. 

It will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth 
here is quite unpractical, and goes against human nature. 
This is perfectly true. It is unpractical, and it goes against 
human nature. This is why it is worth carrying out, and 
that is why one proposes it. For what is a practical scheme.^ 
A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in exist- 
ence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing 
conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one 
objects to; and any scheme that could accept these condi- 
tions is wrong and foolish. The conditions will be done away 



136 WILDE 

with, and human nature will change. The only thing that 
one really knows about human nature is that it changes. 
Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems 
that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human 
nature, and not on its growth and development. The error 
of Louis XIV. was that he thought human nature would always 
be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolu- 
tion. It was an admirable result. All the results of the mis- 
takes of governments are quite admirable. 

It is to be noted that Individualism does not come to the 
man with any sickly cant about duty, which merely means 
doing what other people want because they want it; or any 
hideous cant about self-sacrifice, which is merely a survival 
of savage mutilation. In fact, it does not come to a man 
with any claims upon him at all. It comes naturally and in- 
evitably out of man. It is the point to which all develop- 
ment tends. It is the differentiation to which all organisms 
grow. It is the perfection that is inherent in every mode of 
life, and towards which every mode of life quickens. And 
so Individualism exercises no compulsion over man. On the 
contrary, it says to man that he should suffer no compulsion 
to be exercised over him. It does not try to force people to 
be good. It knows that people are good when they are let 
alone. Man will develop Individualism out of himself. Man 
is now so developing Individualism. To ask whether Indi- 
vidualism is practical is like asking whether Evolution is 
practical. Evolution is the law of life, and there is no evolu- 
tion except towards Individualism. Where this tendency is 
not expressed, it is a case of artificially-arrested growth, or 
of disease, or of death. 

Individualism will also be unselfish and unaffected. It has 
been pointed out that one of the results of the extraordinary 
tyranny of authority is that words are absolutely distorted 
from their proper and simple meaning, and are used to ex- 
press the obverse of their right signification. What is true 
about Art is true about Life. A man is called affected, nowa- 
days, if he dresses as he likes to dress. But in doing that he 
is acting in a perfectly natural manner. Affectation, in such 
matters, consist in dressing according to the views of one's 



WILDE 137 

neighbor, whose views, as they are the views of the majority, 
will probably be extremely stupid. Or a man is called self- 
ish if he lives in the manner that seems to him most suitable 
for the full realisation of his own personality; if, in fact, 
the primary aim of his life is self-development. But this 
is the way in which everyone should live. Selfishness is not 
living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one 
wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's 
lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always 
aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. 
Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as a delight- 
ful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not 
selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for 
himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require 
of one's neighbor that he should think in the same way, and 
hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, 
he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is 
monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A red 
rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would 
be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the 
garden to be both red and roses. Under Individualism peo- 
ple will be quite natural and absolutely unselfish, and will 
know the meanings of the words, and realise them in their 
free, beautiful lives. Nor will men be egotistic as they are 
now. For the egotist is he who makes claims upon others, 
and the Individualist will not desire to do that. It will not 
give him pleasure. When man has realised Individualism, 
he will also realise sympathy and exercise it freely and spon- 
taneously. Up to the present man has hardly cultivated 
sympathy at all. He has merely sympathy with pain, and 
sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy. 
All sympathy is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the 
least fine mode. It is tainted with egotism. It is apt to 
become morbid. There is in it a certain element of terror 
for our own safety. We become afraid that we ourselves 
might be as the leper or as the blind, and that no man 
would have care of us. It is curiously limiting, too. One 
should sympathise with the entirety of life, not with life's 
sores and maladies merely, but with life's joy and beauty 



138 WILDE 

and energy and health and freedom. The wider sympathy 
is, of course, the more difficult. It requires more unselfish- 
ness. Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a 
friend, but it requires a very fine nature — it requires, in 
fact, the nature of a true Individualist — to sympathise with 
a friend's success. 

In the modern stress of competition and struggle for place, 
such sympathy is naturally rare, and is also very much stifled 
by the immoral ideal of uniformity of type and conformity 
to rule which is so prevalent everywhere, and is perhaps most 
obnoxious in England. 

Sympathy with pain there will, of course, always be. It 
is one of the first instincts of man. The animals which are 
individual, the higher animals, that is to say, share it with 
us. But it must be remembered that while sympathy with 
joy intensifies the sum of joy in the world, sympathy with 
pain does not really diminish the amount of pain. It may 
make man better able to endure evil, but the evil remains. 
Sympathy with consumption does not cure consumption; that 
is what Science does. And when Socialism has solved the 
problem of poverty, and Science solved the problem of disease 
the area of the sentimentalists will be lessened, and the sym- 
pathy of man will be large, healthy, and spontaneous. Man 
will have joy in the contemplation of the joyous life of others. 

For it is through joy that the Individualism of the future 
will develop itself. Christ made no attempt to reconstruct 
society, and consequently the Individualism that he preached 
to man could be realised only through pain or in solitude. The 
ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of the man who 
abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society 
absolutely. But man is naturally social. Even the The- 
baid became peopled at last. And though the cenobite realises 
his personality, it is often an impoverished personality that 
he so realises. Upon the other hand, the terrible truth that 
pain is a mode through which man may realise himself ex- 
ercises a wonderful fascination over the world. Shallow 
speakers and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms 
often talk about the world's worship of pleasure, and whine 
against it. But it is rarely in the world's history that its 



WILDE 139 

ideal has been one of joy and beauty. The worship of pain 
has far more often dominated the world. Medisevalism, with 
its saints and martyrs^ its love of self-torture, its wild pas- 
sion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its 
whipping with rods — Mediaevalism is real Christianity, and 
the mediaeval Christ is the real Christ. When the Renais- 
sance dawned upon the world, and brought with it the new 
ideals of the beauty of life and the joy of living, men could 
not understand Christ. Even Art shows us that. The 
painters of the Renaissance drew Christ as a little boy playing 
with another boy in a palace or a garden, or lying back in 
his mother's arms, smiling at her, or at a flower, or at a 
bright bird ; or as a noble, stately figure moving nobly through 
the world; or as a wonderful figure rising in a sort of ecstasy 
from death to life. Even when they drew him crucified they 
drew him as a beautiful God on whom evil men had inflicted 
suffering. But he did not preoccupy them much. What de- 
lighted them was to paint the men and the women whom they 
admired, and to show the loveliness of this lovely earth. They 
painted many religious pictures — in fact, they painted far 
too many, and the monotony of type and motive is weari- 
some, and was bad for art. It was the result of the authority 
of the public in art-matters, and is to be deplored. But their 
soul was not in the subject. Raphael was a great artist 
when he painted his portrait of the Pope. When he painted 
his Madonnas and infant Christs, he is not a great artist at 
all. Christ had no message for the Renaissance, which was 
wonderful because it brought an ideal at variance with his, 
and to find the presentation of the real Christ we must go to 
mediaeval art. There he is one maimed and marred; one 
who is not comely to look on, because Beauty is a j oy ; one who 
is not in fair raiment, because that may be a joy also; he is a 
beggar who has a marvellous soul; he is a leper whose soul is 
divine; he needs neither property nor health; he is a God 
realising his perfection through pain. 

The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is 
great. It was necessary that pain should be put forward as 
a mode of self-realisation. Even now, in some places in the 
world, the message of Christ is necessary. No one who lived 



140 WILDE 

in modern Russia could possibly realise his perfection except 
hy pain. A few Russian artists have realised themselves in 
Art; in a fiction that is mediaeval in character, because its 
dominant note is the realisation of men through suffering. 
But for those who are not artists, and to whom there is no 
mode of life but the actual life of fact, pain is the only door 
to perfection. A Russian who lives happily under the present 
system of government in Russia must either believe that man 
has no soul, or that, if he has, it is not worth developing. A 
Nihilist who rejects all authority, because he knows authority 
to be evil, and welcomes all pain, because through that he 
realises his personality, is a real Christian. To him the 
Christian ideal is a true thing. 

And yet, Christ did not revolt against authority. He ac- 
cepted the imperial authority of the Roman Empire and paid 
tribute. He endured the ecclesiastical authority of the Jewish 
Church, and would not repel its violence by any violence of 
his own. He had, as I said before, no scheme for the recon- 
struction of society. But the modern world has schemes. 
It proposes to do away with poverty and the suffering that 
it entails. It desires to get rid of pain, and the suffering 
that pain entails. It trusts to Socialism and to Science as 
its methods. What it aims at is an Individualism expressing it- 
self through joy. This Individualism will be larger, fuller, 
lovelier than any Individualism has ever been. Pain is not 
the ultimate mode of perfection. It is merely provisional and 
a protest. It has reference to wrong, unhealthy, unjust sur- 
roundings. When the wrong, and the disease, and the in- 
justice are removed, it will have no further place. It was a 
great work, but it is almost over. Its sphere lessens every 
day. 

Nor will man miss it. For what man has sought for is, 
indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has 
sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do 
so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it 
ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will 
be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is 
Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he 
is in harmony with himself and his environment. The new 



WILDE 141 

Individualism, for whose service Socialism, whether it wills 
it or not, is working, will be perfect harmony. It will be what 
the Greeks sought for, but could not, except in Thought, rea- 
lise completely, because they had slaves, and fed them; it 
will be what the Renaissance sought for, but could not realise 
completely except in Art, because they had slaves, and starved 
them. It will be complete, and through it each man will at- 
tain to his perfection. The new Individualism is the new 
Hellenism. 



THE END 



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can Democracy ($1.50). 

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book. Few Americans are prepared for an intelligent discussion of 
the vital problems that clamor for solution. The prevailing unrest can- 
not be interpreted without an understanding of its universal signifi- 
cance. It is necessary for us to get the facts about the rise of British 
labor whose social programme has arrested the world's attention; about 
railways and other public utilities whose future control is in dispute; 
about conscription as a permanent policy; about the institution of 
private property as affected by the war; about the different defini- 
tions of democracy. Such information and much more, essential to 
the manifold study of reconstruction, is presented lucidly in this 
handbook to the new social and industrial order. 

By G. D. H. Cole: Labour in the Commonwealth ($1.50). 

This is virtually a restatement of those fundamental aims to which 
the more articulate section of British labor is endeavoring to give 
expression. It crystallizes the wide-spread dissatisfaction fermenting 
in the minds of workers. "The commodity theory of Labour," says 
the author, "is fundamentally inconsistent with the recognition of 
the fact that 'Labour' consists of human beings." He denies the 
sovereignty of the state but regards it as only one among various 
forms of association. The book reveals the difference between the 
commonwealth that is and the one that might be. Mr. Cole is a 
leading writer in the Guild Socialist movement and this book, in the 
Manchester Guardian's opinion, is his best since "The World of 
Labour." 

PUBLISHED BY B. W. HUEBSCH 



NEW BOOKS 
By Randolph Bourne: Untimely Papers ($1.50). 

Here are gathered together the notable political essays by this leader 
among the younger publicists o£ his day, and a fragment from an 
unfinished work on the State. A fresh scrutiny of this profound, 
brilliantly presented material confirms the widely held opinion that 
our country lost one of its most significant thinkers by his death. 
The volume includes the famous -"The War and the Intellectuals" 
and other papers that contributed to the brief but enviable career 
of The Seven Arts whose editor, James Oppenheim, writes a fore- 
word. 

Waldo R. Browne (editor) : Man or the State? ($1.00). 

As never before, the attention of students of history is concentrated 
on the problems of the State and on the individual's relation to it. 
Such books as those by Laski, Zimmern, Follett and Burns attest the 
interest of contemporary scholars; this volume shows the importance 
to our day of their forerunners of the 19th century. It includes 
essays by Kropotkin, Buckle, Emerson, Thoreau, Spencer, Tolstoy 
and Wilde, that will live long and, as some of them are not easily 
accessible, the book will be doubly prized. An introduction by Mr. 
Browne integrates the contents and relates the best thought of the 
last century to the paramount political questions of our time. 

By Leon Duguit: Law in the Modern State ($2.50). 

M. Duguit is well-known as perhaps the most brilliant of living 
French political thinkers and the book here translated is generally 
regarded as his best and most suggestive work. The decline of the 
omnipotent state has forced into review the problems of representative 
government. M. Duguit discusses in this book the mechanisms by 
which the state may be made effectively responsible to its citizens. 
An introduction by Harold J. Laski traces the relation of his ideas 
to those of American and British thinkers. The book is not only a 
guide to the most vital of modern political problems but an analysis 
of jurisprudence which no lawyer can afford to ignore. The transla- 
tion is by Frida and Harold Laski. 

By H. N. Brailsford: The Covenant of Peace (Paper covers, 

25c.). 

No man in England or America is more competent to exTpound the 
basic principles that must govern a League of Nations than Mr. 
Brailsford whose books and articles on the subject are well known. 
Here he presents the entire subject in an essay that received a prize 
of £100 awarded by a jury that included H. G. Wells, John Gals- 
worthy and Professor Bury. The pamphlet is valuable to those who 
think they know all about the subject as well as to those who know 
that they know nothing about it. An introduction by Herbert Croly 
assists in posing the problem for the reader. 

PUBLISHED BY B. W. HUEBSCH 



